“We need everyone to know what’s going on in the food supply and we them to know about it now.” Zen Honeycutt, Founder, Moms Across America

“Not only does the House bill threaten organic integrity through increased use of pesticides; it preempts Americans at the city, county, and community level from restricting the use of pesticides. Other provisions would allow farmers to spray pesticides into water, including drinking water sources.”

Are you paying attention to the Farm Bill? IRT

IRT: “We are excited to announce the replay of the entire Healing from GMOs and Roundup Expert Interview Series in response to the historic verdict against Monsanto last month! All 18 interviews, plus Jeffrey’s two sessions and our two Global Community Gatherings will be available for viewing or listening for five full days, September 7-11.”

Some of you will know that Monsanto tried to sue the citizen action group Avaaz to force it to hand over information it held on the company, including personal data on members of the public who had signed Avaaz petitions against Monsanto's weedkiller glyphosate.

Well, there's great news. Avaaz won in court against Monsanto. Avaaz just wrote to people on its email list:

"Our hearing just ended, and the judge absolutely DESTROYED Monsanto's subpoena on Avaaz!!!!

"He said the subpoena would have a 'tremendous chilling effect', saying "no member would want to have their privacy and their activity known" and actually gave Monsanto a lecture on democracy and free speech!!

"This subpoena was terrifying and would have had Avaaz spend months and hundreds of thousands of pounds digging up and handing over to Monsanto everything anyone on our team ever said or wrote about them for YEARS. Including even the email addresses and identities of our members who had sent messages to officials about Monsanto!

"Even worse, lawyers told us that courts in New York tend to AUTOMATICALLY GRANT requests like this! Because usually, more info means more justice.

"But then our community got involved. Over 200,000 of us donated, and we hired the best lawyer in the business -- Andrew Celli, who has taken on cases like this before and won. He and his team worked with the Avaaz team to write a ridiculously great takedown of the Monsanto subpoena. It's long and legalistic, but if you speak that language, it's a thing of beauty -- you can read it here (https://avaazimages.avaaz.org/Avaaz%20Foundation%20VS%20Monsanto.pdf).

"Monsanto flew in a top lawyer, a man who's defended everything from asbestos to lead and arsenic. But between our briefs, and the powerful oral arguments, the judge was convinced, and took the incredibly RARE step of throwing out the ENTIRE subpoena!!! Normally they just narrow the scope of the subpoena to something more reasonable, but the judge couldn't find anything reasonable in Monsanto's claims about Avaaz!

"It's a moment to celebrate, but it may not be over.

"Monsanto can still appeal, or come at us another way. But we've got an amazing win and precedent set, and an amazing legal team, and as ever, an amazing movement that will stand by, stand up, and speak truth to power when it threatens.

"The purpose of these big legal attacks is to scare us. I have tears right now as I think about how, with the Avaaz community at our back, I really don't have to fear stuff like this. Because even the most powerful actors in this world, are not more powerful than the truth, than the power of good people coming together to work for everything we love, than the power of all of us in this incredible movement."

Schumer calls on FDA to publish its report on weed-killing chemical found in breakfast foods

“Simply put, the FDA must not only weed out the facts on glyphosate, but they must update the public on their progress,” Schumer said. “I have full confidence in their ability to effectively continue this study, but we are here to send them a message: get going.”

Tell the National School Boards Association: No More Monsanto Roundup Weedkiller!

In light of the latest evidence that Monsanto’s Roundup weedkiller causes cancer, the National School Board Association must do these two things:

One, issue a formal policy statement advising all school districts to end the use of Roundup and all toxic agro-chemicals on school grounds.

Two, issue a formal policy statement advising all school districts to revamp their school lunch programs by transitioning to certified organic foods, in order to avoid serving foods contaminated with glyphosate and other pesticides.

Revolution Health is Live with Zen Honeycutt, Founder and Director of Moms Across America and Author of "Unstoppable." They are educating on Glyphosate, GMO's and Health.

This woman and her team of Moms are true SuperWomen in battling the toxic environment that our children are being exposed to and they are Making a Difference!

Zen talks about how she found out about Glyphosate, she explains genetically modified foods, CRISPR foods, her take on the Monsanto trial, her book - how to talk to your family and friends about gmo foods,

MB: Yes. [W]hile we were working on this, Pedram and I in particular were researching how does non-Hodgkins lymphoma get caused by a pesticide? How does that occur? Either getting it on your skin, or you are breathing it in, or you may have a background level that you are already exposed to because it is in all non-organic food. So we decided to just pull the string on it and do research, and some of the research that came out of that is that there is—part of the human body…is a bunch of bacteria and fungi … that are called microbiota that …are the gut flora that help process foods and create the vitamins, and are part of your immune system. And they are also in your skin and all of your mucus membranes. And the label for Roundup says [it affects an] enzyme found in plants not in humans or pets,” so it’s safe. And they actually promoted it as being safer than salt, and you can actually drink it or put it in your food or bathe in it. They got prohibited by Elliot Spitzer in New York from saying those things, but the label gives the impression, and marketing gives the impression you can put on your shorts and walk out and spray the Roundup on your yard and on your driveway, and there’s no harm to worry about to your kids or your pets or yourself because it only affects an enzyme found in plants, not in humans.

And the lawsuit that we filed is that [the herbicide] interferes with a pathway called the shikimate pathway that involves an enzyme that is necessary for the plants to create three amino acids that are formed in building blocks for proteins. You interfere with those amino acids, you don’t get the proteins, and then the plant dies. And the microbiota that are on your skin and in your mucus membranes and in your gut rely upon the shikimate pathway. Human cells don’t have that pathway, so they don’t depend on the pathway, so it’s partly correct to say that it affects an enzyme found in plants, not in humans. But it is incorrect because the gut flora that are in your body are affected by it. And so it kills them or weakens some beneficial microbiota that affect and monitor cancer cells, and pathogenic microbiota. And some of the pathogenic microbiota are resistant to glyphosate. So it negatively selects bad bacteria to grow and thrive, and decreases some of the microbiota that are helpful for preventing some forms of cancer.

…

PE: But the broad—the policy issues here is that Monsanto’s kind of mantra has been to say 70 regulatory agencies across the world have approved glyphosate for use in their countries. The problem with regulatory agencies [is that they are] usually aligned with the executive, right? Or [with] the administrative government, and they are subject to lobbying influence. Whereas IARC is quite literally a research organization which receives funding from governments, but it is not approached by lobbyists, it doesn’t make regulatory decisions, it has no enforcement power, it is just an arm of the WHO that does pure research. So that is what is so compelling about IARC’s findings

Million Pregnancies Study Shows DDT Insecticide Linked to Autism in Children

The study, conducted in collaboration with investigators at the University of Turku and the National Institute of Health and Welfare in Finland, is the first to connect an insecticide with risk for autism using maternal biomarkers of exposure.

Association of Maternal Insecticide Levels With Autism in Offspring From a National Birth Cohort - 2018

Results:The odds of autism among offspring were significantly increased with maternal p,p&#8242;-DDE levels that were in the highest 75th percentile, with adjustment for maternal age, parity, and history of psychiatric disorders (odds ratio=1.32, 95% CI=1.02, 1.71). The odds of autism with intellectual disability were increased by greater than twofold with maternal p,p&#8242;-DDE levels above this threshold (odds ratio=2.21, 95% CI=1.32, 3.69). There was no association between total levels of maternal PCBs and autism.

Conclusions:These findings provide the first biomarker-based evidence that maternal exposure to insecticides is associated with autism among offspring. Although further research is necessary to replicate this finding, this study has implications for the prevention of autism and may provide a better understanding of its pathogenesis.

“This 54-year study is the first to provide direct evidence that chemical exposures for pregnant women may have lifelong consequences for their daughters' breast cancer risk,” said Barbara A. Cohn, Ph.D., of the Public Health Institute in Berkeley, Calif., and one of the study’s authors. “Environmental chemicals have long been suspected causes of breast cancer, but until now, there have been few human studies to support this idea.

Carey Gillam is a journalist and author, and a public interest researcher for US Right to Know, a non-profit food industry research group

Nathan Donley, Ph.D, is a former cancer researcher who now works as senior scientist in the Center for Biological Diversity's environmental health program.

...

It has since become evident that these papers were anything but independent. Internal Monsanto documents forced into the public spotlight through litigation show that the papers were conceptualized from the outset as a deceptive strategy for Monsanto. One of Monsanto's top scientists not only reviewed the manuscripts but had a hand in drafting and editing them. The finished papers were aimed directly at discrediting IARC's classification.

In one internal email, Monsanto's chief of regulatory science, William Heydens, told the organizer of the panel, "I have gone through the entire document and indicated what I think should stay, what can go, and in a couple spots I did a little editing."

…

The importance of the papers to Monsanto as a tool to counter IARC's classification of glyphosate as a probable carcinogen was laid out in a confidential document dated May 11, 2015, naming several of the scientists who could be used as authors to give the papers credibility. The internal documents speak of "ghost-writing" strategies aimed at using non-company scientists as authors to lend credibility to the findings.

…

How many ghostwritten papers declaring pesticide safety are littering the scientific literature? And given the evidence of misconduct in this instance, why are these papers still in publication? Why has there been no retraction, no clarification, no correction to the obviously deceptive disclosure?

Last August, after the documents gained media attention CRT editor Roger McClellan said the "serious accusations" deserved "careful investigation", and he and CRT publisher Taylor & Francis would take "appropriate action".

Shortly thereafter the Center for Biological Diversity and three other national environmental-health organizations sent a letter to CRT and Taylor & Francis detailing the ethical misconduct and formally asking for a retraction. It's been more than a year since this investigation was begun and, despite multiple follow-up requests by the organizations, no action has been taken.

With Taylor & Francis's own policy being to issue a retraction for misconduct "when there has been an infringement of publishing ethics", the case for retraction couldn't be more clear.

Monsanto's fingerprints are all over this "independent" review, as laid out in Monsanto's own internal documents.

Taylor & Francis must determine the standards to which it is willing to hold scientists who publish in its journals – if not for the reputation of the journals themselves, then for the sake of scientific integrity itself and the public's right to the truth.

A Japanese government panel announced Monday (August 20) that it recommends regulating only genetically modified organisms that have had foreign genes permanently introduced into their genomes and not those whose endogenous genes have been edited, according to NHK World-Japan. This means that developers will not have to get approval from the government to produce gene-edited organisms, The Mainichi reports.

The recent decision of a Californian court to award compensation of $289 million to a man who claimed that herbicides containing glyphosate had caused his cancer (a non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma) has potentially profound implications. Glyphosate (Roundup) is one of the most commonly used herbicides in the world, and in most countries is available to the general public – you can buy it in the UK at your local garden centre. More court cases are pending in the USA, and similar cases in other countries are likely to follow.

A key piece of evidence in the trial was that the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), an agency of the World Health Organisation (WHO), has classified glyphosate as ‘probably carcinogenic’. This classification has been followed by major controversies, particularly in light of the recent relicensing of glyphosate by the European Commission, hundreds of litigation cases in the USA brought by cancer patients against Monsanto (the producer of glyphosate), and the decision of the California Environmental Protection Agency to label glyphosate as a carcinogen.

Disappointingly, but perhaps not surprisingly, this controversy has led to attacks not only on the IARC decision, but also on some of those involved in the IARC Monograph meeting which made the decision, and on IARC itself. These events are not happening in a vacuum. There have been attacks on previous IARC decisions on potential causes of cancer such as formaldehyde, diesel fumes and radiofrequency electromagnetic fields. More ominously, there are moves by some governments to threaten to cut the funding of IARC, in response to these recent ‘inconvenient’ decisions.

So how do the IARC Monographs work? IARC, by far the most authoritative agency in this field, is supported by funding from 26 countries, including the UK. There are independent Governing Councils and Scientific Councils, and also Advisory Groups that recommend which chemicals and other exposures should be considered for evaluation of their carcinogenicity. Monograph Work Groups are then assembled, each of which evaluates the human, animal and mechanistic evidence for carcinogenicity.

On this basis, the agents being reviewed are classified as carcinogenic (group 1), probably carcinogenic (group 2A, which includes glyphosate), possibly carcinogenic (group 2B), not classifiable (group 3), and probably not carcinogenic (group 4). The voting members of the Working Groups are not employed by IARC, and receive no financial compensation; observers from industry and other interested parties can attend the Working Group meetings but not vote. There are clear and strict rules about what evidence can be included in IARC Monographs, with clear rules for searching all of the published literature, and also clear rules that literature that is not publicly available cannot be considered.

I recently reviewed the IARC processes, and some of the criticisms that have been made of them from industry, in a scientific paper with more than 120 co-authors, a group which includes most of the leading researchers in occupational and environmental cancer epidemiology. Some of us disagreed with individual Monograph decisions, which is normal and healthy in science. However, we concluded that, although there is always room for evolution and improvement, that the IARC processes are sound, and that recent industry-funded criticisms have been unfair and unconstructive.

We all look up to IARC and see it as a beacon of independence and objectivity in a world which is becoming increasingly partisan and polarised, and in which scientific evidence is increasingly disparaged and ignored. Facts matter, science matters, and in this field, there is no other agency which even comes close to IARC in terms of independence, objectivity, and transparency.

A few of the myths about IARC that are currently being propagated include “IARC finds that everything causes cancer", “IARC does no research, it only has opinions” and “IARC has been found to be corrupted” – I could go on. The facts are that IARC is under attack because it is objective, effective, and sometimes produces inconvenient findings.

We need, and rely on, a court system which is independent, fair, and not subject to political, corporate, or community pressure. We also need independent scientific bodies such as IARC which can review the scientific evidence objectively, and without conflicts of interest, even if this leads to conclusions that some may find inconvenient.

Is Monsanto's Glyphosate Connected to Red Tide and Marine Life Losses?

Honeycutt: How can officials and residents stop the growth of blue-green algae and red tide safely?

Seneff: For one, banning glyphosate would be a great start! Switching to renewable organic agriculture in the region would greatly curtail the toxic chemicals as well as reducing the nutrient run-off that's fueling the algae blooms. The homeowners should seek a solution for their yards that uses only natural methods to control weeds, including pulling them by hand.

Metafact is a fact-checking website on scientific matters. The editor of the website has posed the question, "Is glyphosate carcinogenic?" to experts. The following response was written by Dr Michael Antoniou in collaboration with GMWatch's Claire Robinson.”

Is glyphosate carcinogenic?

Other epidemiological research – considered alongside animal studies by the World Health Organisation’s cancer agency IARC in a review that led to its classifying glyphosate as a probable human carcinogen – did find a link between exposure to glyphosate herbicides and cancer.[8,9] The strongest link was with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, the type of cancer that Johnson suffers from. Crucially, IARC identified definitive evidence that glyphosate is genotoxic; that is, it causes damage to DNA and thus compromises gene function, which could over time lead to cancer.[9]

Overall, the most comprehensive analysis of glyphosate’s ability to cause cancer is the review of IARC, which considered all peer-reviewed published literature.[8,9] Claims by pesticide industry defenders that this agency is discredited and its scientists biased have been comprehensively refuted by IARC.[10]

In conclusion, there are data from laboratory studies, including animal toxicity tests, and epidemiological investigations to justifiably classify glyphosate-based herbicides as probable carcinogens. Thus the jury’s conclusion – informed by testimony from several expert witness scientists appearing in support of the plaintiff – that Roundup was a substantial contributor to Johnson’s non-Hodgkin lymphoma appears justified. This is especially so in light of his unusually high-level occupational exposure over a considerable period of time.

Nevertheless, there are two important questions that remain to be answered:

1. The toxic potential of the co-formulants/adjuvants (e.g. POEA) is generally ignored by regulators[11] – yet they are present in commercial pesticides, including glyphosate-based herbicides such as Roundup. Do these adjuvants contribute to Roundup’s ability to cause cancer?

FRANKFURT (Reuters) - The number of U.S. lawsuits brought against Bayer’s (BAYGn.DE) newly acquired Monsanto has jumped to about 8,000, as the German drugmaker braces for years of legal wrangling over alleged cancer risks of glyphosate-based weedkillers.

Three nonprofit groups today jointly announced that they have resolved a consumer-protection action filed by the groups against General Mills on August 24, 2016, concerning General Mills’ labeling of its Nature Valley Granola Bars as “Made with 100% Natural Whole Grain Oats.” A copy of the Complaint is available at:...

One of the Largest Aquifers in the World Is Disappearing Because of Farmers

They know that if they do not conserve, the Ogallala Aquifer, the source of their prosperity, will go dry. The Ogallala, also known as the High Plains Aquifer, is one of the largest underground freshwater sources in the world. It underlies an estimated 174,000 square miles of the Central Plains and holds as much water as Lake Huron. It irrigates portions of eight states, from Wyoming, South Dakota, and Nebraska in the North to Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Texas in the South.

Seneff: “Consumer demand (mostly from countries outside of North America) is going to be the main driver behind getting farmers to stop using glyphosate as a desiccant.”

Day of reckoning coming for pre-harvest glyphosate?

“A large number of similar pending cases will now likely multiply,” a market watcher told Reuters.

Bayer could be tied up in court cases for years or will have to fork over billions to settle the lawsuits. Future court cases over glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, will generate more negative press — encouraging retailers to pull the product from shelves and fuelling political pressure to ban the herbicide. Investors are also asking questions about future sales of glyphosate-tolerant crops, which are core to Monsanto’s business.

Australia: Councils urged to suspend use of Roundup or face risk of legal action

“Local government authorities are now compelled by this legal precedent to protect their constituents and worker’s health and their own legal liability by suspending the use of glyphosate in public places and invest in safer, alternative weed control practices,” she said.

“It is simply absurd to suggest that allowing children to play on freshly sprayed grass within minutes of a pesticide application is safe.

Ten Thousand Chemicals in Food and Food Packaging: What Are These Substances Doing to Our Children? By the World Mercury Project Team

The endocrine-disrupting effects of the additives found in food are of particular concern in early life, when developmental programming of organ systems is susceptible to permanent and lifelong disruption.

Nestle USA, which created its own non-GMO label, was recently the target of a class action lawsuit in California over its seal. Lead plaintiff Jennifer Latiff alleges that even though the company uses a non-GMO label on more than 40,000 products – including Stouffer’s and Lean Cuisine frozen meals – the products actually contain some genetically engineered ingredients.

In addition, Nestle non-GMO label appears very similar to The Non-GMO Project’s butterfly logo, according to the complaint.

One lawsuit seeks to get dicamba taken off the market altogether. Oral arguments are scheduled for Aug. 29 in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in Seattle over whether the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency broke the law in granting the herbicide a two-year registration, which expires in November.

Chemical pesticides have been in use since the end of World War II, and we have learned a number of lessons in that time: Chemicals that we thought (and were told) were perfectly safe have been found to be profoundly damaging to the birds and bees&#8202;—&#8202;and to us.

The insecticide chlorpyrifos, for instance, developed as a Nazi nerve gas, was promoted in the post-war period as an effective pesticide to kill cockroaches and other indoor pests and to stave off insects on farmland. It was not until 2000 that the evidence had piled high enough to show the brain-damaging properties of this insecticide, and advocates pushed hard enough to overcome industry lobbying, to pass an indoor ban. Another nearly 20 years have passed and we are still fighting over chlorpyrifos.

Hawaii was the first to pass a state-wide ban on chlorpyrifos in June and, just last week, the 9th Circuit Court ruled that the EPA must heed its own science and ban the insecticide as well. Now we know glyphosate formulations, which had been promoted as perfectly safe for human health for years, is irrefutably linked to non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. At the press conference after the ruling, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., attorney of counsel Baum Hedlund, who tried the case, noted that “Monsanto has other problems.” The science on these glyphosate formulations is “cascading” with increasing evidence that these products may also be associated liver cancer and endocrine disruption, he added.

We’ve also learned that many of the companies that produce the chemicals we interact with daily have suppressed data, manipulated science, and lied to regulators. It has been reported that Dupont, for example, knew about the toxicity in the chemicals used in its Teflon products, but marketed the products as safe nonetheless. It has also been shown that Monsanto well knew the impacts of its PCBs and fought communities in court for years before settling lawsuits worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Now we know, through this case’s discovery process, that Monsanto has done all of this to keep its glyphosate products on the market. At that same press conference, Johnson’s lawyers noted that they were only able to use a fraction of the evidence against Monsanto in this trial. But more will likely come out in the proceeding cases.

We have been witness to this decades-long history of chemical companies dismissing the science about the human and environmental harm of specific chemicals&#8202;—&#8202;sometimes for years, sometimes for decades&#8202;—&#8202;all while their products remain in use.

Kids vitamins are supposed to be healthy, right? Well then, what's going on with Flintstones Vitamins, which proudly claims to be "Pediatricians' #1 Choice"? Produced by the global pharmaceutical corporation Bayer, this wildly successful brand features a shocking list of unhealthy ingredients, including:

WATCH: New Film Exposes ‘Monstrous’ Child Deformities Caused by Agrochemicals in Argentina

The shocking film "Genetically Modified Children" unveils the horrors of decades of chemical-intensive agricultural practices in Argentina, where the majority of crops are genetically modified (GM) and routinely doused in dangerous agrochemicals, and the chokehold big tobacco companies such as Philip Morris and chemical and seed giants have on poverty-stricken farmers desperate to earn a living.

The film, produced by Juliette Igier and Stephanie Lebrun, shows the devastating health effects the region's agricultural sector is having on children,1 an increasing number of whom are being born with monstrous physical deformities. Some of the children's cases are so severe that, without a medical intervention, will result in death before the age of five.

Consumer Reports’ testing shows concerning levels of arsenic, cadmium, and lead in many popular baby and toddler foods

Our testing did have some encouraging findings for parents: It showed that 16 of the products had less concerning levels of the heavy metals, suggesting that all baby food manufacturers should be able to achieve similar results.

…

Our survey also suggests that parents are often unaware of the potential risks of heavy metals in their kids’ food. About half, for example, believed that children’s foods are subject to more strict regulation and safety testing procedures than other packaged foods.

But they aren’t—even though the FDA has acknowledged the dangers heavy metals in baby and toddler foods could pose.

In 2016, the FDA did propose limiting inorganic arsenic in infant rice cereal to 100 parts per billion, and in 2013 proposed limiting inorganic arsenic in apple juice to 10 ppb, the federal arsenic standard for drinking water. But neither limit was ever finalized. The agency told CR it is on track to finalize these guidelines by the end of 2018.

We informed the FDA of our overall findings, and the agency told us: “The agency has made this a priority and is working to reduce the health risks these elements present, especially to those most vulnerable: children.”

Just about every day there is a new case of corporate malfeasance—bribery, tax evasion, price-fixing, defrauding of government or consumers, environmental violations, unfair labor practices and much more. Given the frequency of these scandals, it is difficult to keep track of which corporation has done what.

The Corporate Rap Sheets below are dossiers summarizing the most significant crimes, violations and other questionable activities of the world’s largest and most controversial companies.

Monsanto didn’t just prevent the public from finding out about the toxicity of dioxins. The company actively falsified studies on the subject. In 1985 Monsanto medical director George Roush declared under oath that he had known of such manipulations, according to a different Poison Papers file in which 27 cancer cases of workers exposed to dioxins were excluded from a peer-reviewed scientific study.

This rigged study was instrumental in the US Environmental Protection Agency failing to regulate dioxins, explain the Poison Paper publishers. The same falsification additionally protected manufacturers against the lawsuits of Agent Orange victims.

Vietnam Set to Increase Legal Pressure on Monsanto for Millions of Agent Orange Victims

“This case is a precedent that changes previous arguments that the herbicides supplied to the U.S. military by Monsanto and other American chemical companies during the Vietnam War are not harmful to people’s health,” deputy Foreign Ministry spokesperson Nguyen Phuong Tra said Thursday.

“We believe Monsanto should be held responsible for compensating the millions of Vietnamese victims of Agent Orange for the damage caused by the company’s herbicides,” Tra continued.

IRT: “New Film: Secret Ingredients shares the stories of people who regain their health after they remove GMOs and pesticides from their diet. Stay tuned for release information coming soon, and how you can see this groundbreaking new film by Jeffrey Smith and Amy Hart. Watch the trailer.”

"This isn't the United States of America, this is the United States of Corporations." Michael Baum, Esq.

WATCH: New Film Exposes ‘Monstrous’ Child Deformities Caused by Agrochemicals in Argentina

The shocking film "Genetically Modified Children" unveils the horrors of decades of chemical-intensive agricultural practices in Argentina, where the majority of crops are genetically modified (GM) and routinely doused in dangerous agrochemicals, and the chokehold big tobacco companies such as Philip Morris and chemical and seed giants have on poverty-stricken farmers desperate to earn a living.

The film, produced by Juliette Igier and Stephanie Lebrun, shows the devastating health effects the region's agricultural sector is having on children,1 an increasing number of whom are being born with monstrous physical deformities. Some of the children's cases are so severe that, without a medical intervention, will result in death before the age of five.

…

Biotech companies’ outrageous attempts to push for their corporate interests extend far beyond the halls of government. In a further effort to hoodwink the public, Monsanto and its cohorts are now zealously spoon-feeding scientists, academics and journalists with questionable studies that depict them in a positive light.

By hiring “third-party experts,” biotech companies are able to take information of dubious validity and present it as independent and authoritative. It’s a shameful practice that is far more common than anyone would like to think. One notorious example of this is Henry Miller, who was thoroughly outed as a Monsanto shill during the 2012 Proposition 37 GMO labeling campaign in California.

Miller, falsely posing as a Stanford professor, promoted GE foods during this campaign. In 2015, he published a paper in Forbes Magazine attacking the findings of the International Agency for Research on Cancer, a branch of the World Health Organization, after it classified glyphosate as a probable human carcinogen. After it was revealed that Miller’s work was in fact ghostwritten by Monsanto, Forbes not only fired him, but also removed all of his work from its site.

Industry front groups also abound. The Genetic Literacy Project and the American Council for Science and Health are both Monsanto-funded. Even WebMD, a website that is often presented as a trustworthy source of "independent and objective" health information, is acting as a lackey for Monsanto by using its influence to promote corporate-backed health strategies and products, displaying advertisements and advertorials on Biotech’s behalf, furthering the biotech industry’s agenda — all for the sake of profit.

Among some 8,700 people who blame their cancer on Bayer’s recently acquired Monsanto unit, the couple is asking to go to the front of the line to present their case to a jury in December “before they die.”

Dr. Huber is Professor Emeritus of Plant Pathology at Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN. He received B.S. and M.S. degrees from the University of Idaho (1957, 1959), a Ph-D from Michigan State University (1963), and is a graduate of the US Army Command & General Staff College and Industrial College of the Armed Forces. He was Cereal Pathologist at the University of Idaho for 8 years before joining the Department of Botany & Plant Pathology at Purdue University in 1971.

His agricultural research the past 50 years has focused on the epidemiology and control of soilborne plant pathogens with emphasis on microbial ecology, cultural and biological controls, and physiology of hostparasite relationships. Research also includes nitrogen metabolism, micronutrient physiology, inhibition of nitrification, and nutrient-disease interactions.

In addition to his academic positions and research, Dr. Huber has had several concurrent careers including 14 years as a professional labor-relations mediator with 7 years service on the Indiana Education Employment Relations Board as a Mediatory/Fact Finder/Conciliator, and served 12 years on two school boards with recognition as a Master Board Member from the Indiana School Board Association and Honesty in Public Service Award from Taxpayers United For Fairness. He retired in 1995 as Associate Director of the Armed Forces Medical Intelligence Center (Colonel) after 41+ years of active and reserve military service.

He has received various awards for his scientific accomplishments and contributions to government. Dr. Huber is an active scientific reviewer; international research cooperator with projects in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Chile, China, Costa Rica, Denmark, Germany, Japan, Mexico, and Russia; and a consultant to academia, industry, and government. He is author or co-author of over 300 journal articles, Experiment Station Bulletins, research presentations, book chapters and review articles; 3 books, and 84 special invited publications. He is internationally recognized for his expertise in the development of nitrification inhibitors to improve the efficiency of N fertilizers, interactions of the form of nitrogen, manganese and other nutrients in disease, herbicide-nutrient-disease interactions, techniques for rapid microbial identification, and cultural control of plant diseases.

His greatest accomplishment has been his marriage to Paula Huber and their 11 children and 35 grandchildren. Dr. Huber currently serves as APS coordinator of the USDA National Plant Disease Recovery System (NPDRS). January 31, 2013

Article by Robyn O’Brien from 2014 about her conversation with Dr. Don Huber, one of the first scientists to speak out about glyphosate.

Dr. Huber’s Brave Crusade Against Biotech

Today, the morning after learning of Dr. Huber’s accident, Monsanto reported earnings. The sale of their herbicide products were up 23.3%. They are a chemical company, and their genetically engineered products have been made to withstand increasing doses of their chemicals. And while Dr. Huber is no longer the only one calling this out, it is becoming increasingly obvious that we need all hands on deck.

HOW A RAGTAG GROUP OF OREGON LOCALS TOOK ON THE BIGGEST CHEMICAL COMPANIES IN WORLD — AND WON

The Lincoln County aerial spray ban, which passed in May 2017, is just one of 155 local measures that restrict pesticides. Communities around the country — including Dubuque, Iowa; Reno, Nevada; Spokane, Washington; and Santa Fe, New Mexico — have instituted protections that go beyond the basic limits set by federal law. Some are aimed at specific pesticides, such as glyphosate, others list a few; while still others ban the chemicals altogether. In the three decades after the first local pesticide restriction was passed in 1970 in Maine, the bans came in a slow trickle. These days, they are coming in a flood, with towns and counties passing more of these measures in the past six years than they did in the 40 before that, according to data from the advocacy group Beyond Pesticides.

The uptick in local legislation is a testament to public concerns about the chemicals used in gardening, farming, and timber production, and reflect a growing frustration with federal inaction. In recent years, scientific research on pesticides has shown credible links between pesticides and cancer, endocrine disruption, respiratory illnesses and miscarriage, and children’s health problems, including neurobehavioral and motor deficits. As scientists have been documenting these chemicals’ harms, juries have also increasingly been recognizing them.

According AGA and OCM, “current policy allows foreign meat to be imported into the U.S. and bear the label ‘Product of U.S.A.’ if it simply passes through a USDA-inspected plant, and the abuses of this label are rampant.”

To fix this problem, AGA and OCM filed a “Petition for change to the Food Safety and Inspection Services (FSIS) Standards and Labeling Policy Book on ‘Product of U.S.A.’” FSIS will accept public comments on the petition though August 17, 2018. See update above for new deadline.

Current labeling policy discriminates against U.S. producers

Polls show that 93 percent of consumers want country of origin labeling (COOL) on meat. For more than one-third of the U.S. consumers, the origin of beef is a “deciding factor” when purchasing steaks. Consumers are willing to pay a 19-percent premium for the “U.S.A. Guaranteed” steak.

Given the consumer demand for U.S. meat, U.S. producers should be doing great. However, without accurate labels, imports have flooded the market. As a result, prices for U.S. farmers and ranchers have tanked while factory farm meat producers like Tyson Foods, Cargill and JBS are enjoying windfall profits.

The Cornucopia Institute: “Although AquaBounty, the makers of engineered fast-growing salmon, have refused to tell the public where their product is being sold, their CEO recently bragged to investors that it is being used in the Canadian buyer’s “high-end sashimi lines, not their frozen prepared foods.” Consumers must continue to be wary of the origin of their food: know your farmer!”

All told, ProPublica and The Times found that Dr. Baselga had failed to report any industry ties in 60 percent of the nearly 180 papers he had published since 2013. That figure increased each year — he did not disclose any relationships in 87 percent of the journal articles that he co-wrote last year.

In an interview and later statement, Dr. Baselga said he planned to correct his conflict-of-interest disclosures in 17 journal articles, including in The New England Journal and The Lancet. But he contended that in dozens of other cases, no disclosure was required because the topics of the articles had little financial implication. He also said his failed disclosures were unintentional and should not reflect on the value of the research he conducted.

This farm bill could allow agribusinesses to dump pesticides straight into waterways, prevent cities and counties from taking action on toxic pesticides polluting their communities, and continue to allow millionaire landowners to line their pockets with taxpayer dollars.

How the Farm Bill Could Keep You from Banning Roundup at Your Kid’s Playground

Section 9101 of the House farm bill would allow the federal government to preempt local governments from setting their own standards for pesticides. And Montgomery County is one of 155 such localities across the nation that could see its pesticide laws stripped away, according to an interactive map published today by the nonprofit advocacy groups Beyond Pesticides and Environmental Working Group (EWG).

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The farm bill conference committee begins meeting today to reconcile the House and Senate versions of the bill. The Senate bill does not contain the community preemption provision and groups like EWG and Beyond Pesticides are working to keep it out of the final bill.

“This provision has nothing to do with farming or food,” says Scott Faber, vice president of government affairs at EWG. “It’s presumably an effort by the pesticide industry to punish those communities that dare to decide for themselves whether their kids should roll around in Roundup.”

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The preemption provision in the farm bill would overturn decades of Supreme Court precedent, established by the 1991 case, Wisconsin Pub. Intervenor vs. Mortier, which allowed states to set laws that are stricter than federal law.

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“Big agriculture interests have spent millions of dollars over the past few decades fighting against federal protections from toxic pesticides. Now these same interests are trying to use the farm bill to undermine safeguards put in place by state and local governments,” said Representative Earl Blumenauer (D-Oregon), one of the signatories to the letter, in an email.

Faber notes that Monsanto (soon to be Bayer), Dow, and CropLife America, the pesticide industry trade association, in particular have all disclosed that they’ve lobbied on pesticide provisions in the farm bill in their lobbying records, though he can’t say whether they’ve had a role in crafting section 9101.

Pesticide companies want to “stymie a growing national grassroots movement that’s encouraging alternatives to their products because these policies don’t just take away a product, they encourage safer management practices and organic systems approaches to landscape management that effectively replace their toxic chemicals with practices that are more sustainable,” says Toher.

Because the thresholds under Proposition 65 are so low, even a very small amount of any Proposition 65 listed chemical will be enough to support a claim against your company. See the list on the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) website, oehha.ca.gov.

The Human Rights Watch report, entitled “You don’t want to breathe pesticides anymore,” tells how rural residents live in fear of reporting pesticide poisonings, and stay silent rather than advocate for protective regulations assuring the safe use of these toxic substances. They worry that they will be subjected to reprisals from large landowners who possess significant political and economic clout.

Franciana, for one, did not report her incident for fear of losing the small amount of financial aid the landowner had offered her.

While Franciana’s problem may seem solely Brazil’s own, the fact that this Latin American nation exports vast amounts of sprayed fruit, vegetables and coffee, along with meat fattened on pesticide-laden soy, should give consumers the world over pause.

The fall of a prominent food and marketing researcher may be a cautionary tale for scientists who are tempted to manipulate data and chase headlines.

Brian Wansink, the head of the Food and Brand Lab at Cornell University, announced last week that he would retire from the university at the end of the academic year. Less than 48 hours earlier, JAMA, a journal published by the American Medical Association, had retracted six of Wansink's studies, after Cornell told the journal's editors that Wansink had not kept the original data and the university could not vouch for the validity of his studies.

In an internal review spurred by a wide range of allegations of research misconduct, a Cornell faculty committee reported a litany of faults with Wansink's work, including "misreporting of research data, problematic statistical techniques, failure to properly document and preserve research results, and inappropriate authorship." Cornell apologized for Wansink's "academic misconduct," removed him from his teaching and research posts, and obligated him to spend the remainder of his time there "cooperating with the university in its ongoing review of his prior research."

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P-hacking is when researchers play with data to arrive at results that look like they're scientifically significant. For instance, they can cherry pick data points, re-analyze the data in multiple ways or stop an experiment early.

In a massive victory for independent science, it was announced Sunday that the U.S. Senate and Congress appropriations committees have deleted text from a controversial Bill, which would have cut all the U.S. funding to the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), after they challenged the chemical industry by classifying the world’s most used herbicide, glyphosate, as a probable human carcinogen in 2015.

The ‘IARC rider’ text on page 110 (sec.229) of the draft Labor Health and Human Services FY19 Appropriations Bill was removed after negotiations.

Currently, 25 Nations contribute to IARC’s total budget of about USD $50 million (about EUR 44 million), with 7.5% (USD $3.8 million) coming from the U.S..

Following IARC’s classification of glyphosate as a probable human carcinogen in 2015, Monsanto and the American Chemistry Council launched a full-throttle attack on the international scientific body.

GM Watch: “In a deeply sinister development, an obscure "science and technology think tank" wants to deny Americans the right to choose non-GMO foods. The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) has filed a petition with the US FDA against the Non-GMO Project in the hopes of getting its butterfly label banned from food packaging.”

US: GMO lobbyist attacks non-GMO labelling

GMO lobbyist Val Giddings – a former vice president of the Biotechnology Industry Organisation – is a senior fellow at this think thank.

STUART, Fla. - Stuart city commissioners voted to ban city use of the chemical glyphosate Monday night. Glyphosate is commonly found in the weed killer Roundup. It has been considered possibly carcinogenic and other research links the chemical to algae growth.

Now Martin County commissioners have directed staff to come back to the board in 90 days with an integrated pest management plan to reduce the use of glyphosate with the ultimate goal of eliminating chemicals.

Seneff: “Pressure is being put on the food industry to stop spraying oats with glyphosate right before harvest. Maybe it will have impact?? Especially if a lot of parents start boycotting non-organic oatmeal and Cheerios!”

US Food Brands Petition EPA to Ban Pre-Harvest Glyphosate Spraying

In 2016, a testing project by Food Democracy Now! and The Detox Project found alarming levels of glyphosate in General Mills’ Cheerios and Honey Nut Cheerios, Kellogg’s Corn Flakes, Raisin Bran and Frosted Flakes and PepsiCo’s Doritos Cool Ranch, Ritz Crackers and Stacy’s Simply Naked Pita Chips, as well as many more famous products.

In August, independent laboratory tests commissioned by EWG found glyphosate residues in popular oat-based foods marketed toward children. Almost three-fourths of the samples tested had glyphosate levels higher than what EWG scientists consider protective of children’s health with an adequate margin of safety.

GM Watch: “A few months ago GMWatch published two articles about the well known defender of pesticides and GMOs, Kevin Folta, doing lucrative consultancy work for Bayer while simultaneously claiming he declines all paid consultancy. Now the pro-GMO blog Biofortified has not only confirmed the Bayer consultancy but its founders have publicly condemned Folta for lying about it.”

Glyphosate, the world's most widely used weed killer, has caused concerns over its potential risk to human health and the environment for decades. Now, new research shows that glyphosate may be indirectly killing bees.

Dr Novotny's account of the events surrounding the Séralini study reveals the depths of deception and malpractice to which some scientists and corporations will resort in order to protect their products, even when they know or suspect that those products are harming the public. The journal that retracted the study, Food and Chemical Toxicology, no longer has Goodman and Hayes in place on its editorial board, but its publisher Elsevier should publish an apology to the Seralini team for its journal's role in the affair and the resulting damage to the reputations of the scientists involved.

Following a successful lawsuit against Monsanto for concealing the cancer risks of its pesticide Round Up, the lawyer representing the plaintiffs in the case says the Bayer subsidiary is likely to face many more legal challenges in the future.

DER SPIEGEL: The dangers of Monsanto products have been under discussion for decades. Why did a court only decide to address the issue now?

Wisner: There are several reasons. The most important was probably the classification by the International Agency for Research on Cancer, which is part of the World Health Organization. In early 2015, they evaluated glyphosate as "probably carcinogenic to humans." Monsanto's CEO responded by calling it "junk science." Before that, nobody had collected so much data and looked so deeply at the issue. That was a wake-up call.

DER SPIEGEL: How much does Monsanto have to do with the fact that a verdict was reached only now?

Wisner: A lot! Monsanto has an internal program called "Let Nothing Go." The aim of this program is to attack scientists who are critical of Monsanto products. They go after people directly and discredit them. They also pay others to do so.

DER SPIEGEL: Are there other such PR strategies?

Wisner: Another program is called "Freedom to Operate." Its purpose is to eliminate everything that might disrupt sales of their products - laws, scientific articles, they go after everything. As part of that effort, they also engage lobbyists - scientists who Monsanto pays for their opportunism. Such programs reflect a corporate culture that shows no interest whatsoever in public health, only in profits.

DER SPIEGEL: Monsanto continues to dispute that it tried to influence scientific research. What was the critical factor for jurors in reaching the verdict?

Wisner: I believe it was the scientific findings themselves. The 12 jurors were not lightweights after all. There was a molecular biologist, an environmental engineer, a lawyer. Some colleagues told me: "Be careful Brent, so much intelligence can be an impediment." But I was certain that the arguments in the critical studies, parts of which were suppressed, were the strongest evidence we had.

“People don’t have to think twice about what is going in their bodies with Foodstirs baking mixes,” said Sarah Michelle Gellar, Chief Creative Officer and Co-Founder. “Our Glyphosate Residue-Free products raise the standard of what is acceptable in products so people can feel safe and good about what they’re eating.”

Seneff: “Bad news! The French government voted against banning glyphosate despite the fact that over 80% of the population think it's bad for human health.”

French President Emmanuel Macron made a campaign promise: to ban glyphosate, the weedkiller sold under the Roundup brand. But last week, his party’s lawmakers rejected an amendment to do that, raising accusations they are beholden to the farm lobby.

In its study the association notes that the levels of substances found in the nappies are very low but nevertheless the health risks associated with them "cannot be ruled out" because "newborn babies are exposed to glyphosate and other volatile organic components from other sources".

How Many American Deaths Will the EPA be Responsible for Before They Ban Glyphosate Herbicide?

How is this chemical possibly in the market? When the EPA okayed glyphosate (again) in 1993, it relied on the same toxicity studies Monsanto originally submitted.

Most of them were done in the 1970s, when the chemical was first used as an herbicide. Most, if not all of them, were done at the notorious Hazleton Laboratories (now Covance).

This lab also provided the tobacco industry with studies showing that second-hand smoke isn’t harmful to human health. The list of alleged violations for this lab is long and includes adding extra animals to experiments, not following scientific protocols, and secretly keeping extra animals off-site.

These, and other violations dating back decades, cast serious doubt on the validity of the toxicity studies done on glyphosate

It seems beyond doubt that cronyism, rather than any honest evaluation of the scientific data, is keeping glyphosate on the market. It’s time for that to change.

Michael McNeill on GMOs and Glyphosate, Family Days on the Farm, Keynote Speaker

Michael McNeill is an agronomist (the science of soil management and the production of field crops) from Iowa who has worked in the military as a plant pathologist and he also managed a Funk Seed research station for 12 years. Since 1983, he has worked in his company Ag Advisory, advising farmers with thousands of acres. Mr. McNeill has seen firsthand how GMOs and chemicals (especially glyphosate) have affected our land, animals, people and his own health.

Update: Good news! Thanks to everyone who contacted Congress in support of the Local FARMS Act, one important piece of that bill—the Local Agriculture Market Program (LAMP)—was included in the Senate version of the Farm Bill. Please use the form on this page to send a follow-up email to your members of Congress asking them to keep up the campaign for local food in the Farm Bill!

Demand for locally grown food is on the rise, as consumers take more interest in how their food is produced, and how food production affects their own health, and the health of their communities.

That’s a positive trend. But if consumers want more local food, we have to help ensure the economic success of the independent farmers who grow that food.

“Fairness for Farmers: A Report Assessing the Fair Trade Movement and the Role of Certification,” identifies the fundamental differences between six fair trade product labels. It also emphasizes the importance of purchasing fair-trade certified products to ensure farmer fairness and to combat power imbalances often seen within global supply chains. The report states:

Small-scale farmers face many threats including land grabbing, unfair trade agreements, lack of government and technical support, low and volatile prices, uneven wealth distribution, corporate control of the food system, and climate change.

Global trade favors those already in power—businesses, governments, and the largest players at any stage of the supply chain whether large-scale farms, factory owners, or mega-corporations. In conventional supply chains, producers—the bottom of the chain—generally lack negotiating power and small-scale producers are further marginalized within the production sector since they are competing against bigger and better-resourced producers.

Now, with two-thirds of the world’s land experiencing some level of desertification—causing hunger, poverty, violence, immigration and war worldwide—Savory is more confident than ever in the theory he discovered more than 40 years ago: The root cause of the problem lies in how we choose to manage land.

There Are Nearly 1,000 Chemicals in Our Food That Have Never Been Tested for Safety

Why the FDA and the EPA aren't set up to protect us from contaminants in the food we eat.

In July 2017, The New York Times ran a story titled The Chemicals in Your Mac and Cheese. Researchers, the article explained, had found plasticizers—known as phthalates—in the popular kids’ food. Fewer than two weeks later, the Times reported that traces of the herbicide glyphosate, the main ingredient in Roundup, had been found in Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. Several people asked me: Should we be worried?

My answer: Yes, we should, but not just because researchers found plasticizers (which are chemicals that make plastics more durable) in our mac and cheese or herbicide in our ice cream. We should be worried because these kinds of environmental chemical contaminants are literally everywhere, in nearly all our foods.

Monsanto has defended the independence of the 2016 review, and the journal isn’t changing the papers’ scientific findings. But the journal’s publisher said Wednesday it’s issuing an “Expression of Concern” linked to the articles because the authors “have been unable to provide an adequate explanation to why the required level of transparency was not met on first submission.”

Patented Plants: What do GMO Patents Mean for Farmers, Researchers, and Consumers?

Chemical companies have turned patents and litigation into weapons against farmers big and small. The good news is that as consumers, we have the power to change the way our food is grown and made. By voting with our dollars, we can choose not to support practices that privatize our food supply, hurt small farmers, and restrict the free flow of information. The non-GMO movement is about more than the right to know, it’s also about doing what’s right. If you care about protecting our seed supply against predatory practices and corporate ownership, Look for the Butterfly when you shop.

The GMO Debate: One Student’s Experience of Pro-GMO Propaganda at Cornell University - 2016

My name is Robert, and I am a Cornell University undergraduate student. However, I’m not sure if I want to be one any more. Allow me to explain.

Cornell, as an institution, appears to be complicit in a shocking amount of ecologically destructive, academically unethical, and scientifically deceitful behavior. Perhaps the most potent example is Cornell’s deep ties to industrial GMO agriculture, and the affiliated corporations such as Monsanto. I’d like to share how I became aware of this troubling state of affairs.

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We live in somewhat of a scientific dark age. Our universities have become extensions of corporate power, at the cost of our health, livelihoods, and ecology. This has to stop, yesterday. We cannot afford to spread lies to our undergraduate students. Cornell, please reconsider your ways. Until you do, I will be doing everything in my power to counter your industry GMO propaganda efforts with the facts.

Seneff: “Surprise Surprise! Glyphosate disrupts the gut microbiome of bees, harming the bees. Finally they are acknowledging that glyphosate might be a factor in bee colony collapse syndrome. My personal belief is that it is the biggest factor.”

Monsanto's global weedkiller harms honeybees, research finds

Glyphosate – the most used pesticide ever – damages the good bacteria in honeybee guts, making them more prone to deadly infections

Seneff: “This is a remarkable ten minute video on the phosphate fertilizer industry in Florida. No wonder they have a blue-green algae problem!”

Phosphate Fertilizer

Phosphate Mining is Florida's dirty little secret. Not many people even know of the environmental devastation that is going on in our state involving this mining. Our leaders are looking the other way while these companies destroy our natural wonders. Please share this video because all Floridians need to know the facts so we can demand that our leaders stop them from poisoning our environment and our water supply!

Date: March 1, 2010Source: University of California - BerkeleySummary: The herbicide atrazine, one of the world's most widely used pesticides, wreaks havoc with the sex lives of adult male frogs, emasculating three-quarters of them and turning one in 10 into females, according to a new study. These changes occur at atrazine levels below what the EPA considers safe for drinking water. The changes skew sex ratios in the frog population and could be a major cause of amphibian decline worldwide.

Trump’s EPA Says More Americans Will Die Under Its Power-Plant Rollback

The new rule would give states more leeway to set limits on greenhouse gas emissions from their power sectors -- even though, by the agency’s own admission, that will result in higher levels of particulate matter and ozone being emitted by coal plants than would have occurred under President Barack Obama’s plan. That pollution is linked with respiratory infections, asthma and impaired lung function.

Several years ago, I discovered that a genetically-engineered glyphosate-resistant tobacco seed had been developed and patented [1]; however, it is very difficult to find out what percentage of the tobacco crops are actually grown from these engineered seeds. One anecdotal answer to this question comes from the recently released documentary, Genetically Modified Children, produced and directed by Juliette Igier and Stephanie Lebrun. This movie describes the severe health issues that afflict the children of agricultural workers who live surrounded by glyphosate-resistant tobacco crops produced for sale exclusively to the tobacco company, Philip Morris. The farmers who were interviewed readily admitted that Philip Morris would most likely reject their product if they did not use glyphosate to control weeds and Bayer’s insecticide Confidor to control insects.

The documentary reveals the severe physical deformities, mental disabilities and cancers the children of these tobacco farmers are experiencing, and it offers the rather audacious hypothesis that glyphosate is inducing genetic mutations in the children of these farmers. Could they be right?

In the remainder of this article, I will first describe some of the serious health issues of the children who live near the tobacco fields, as portrayed in the documentary. After a short section about correlations between glyphosate and various diseases, I will discuss, in the following three sections, both the evidence that glyphosate causes birth defects, infertility, developmental issues, DNA damage and cancer, and the plausible biological mechanisms that could explain a link. The next section is devoted to describing the evidence that glyphosate can get into proteins by mistake in place of the coding amino acid glycine, which I now believe is its main mechanism of insidious cumulative toxicity. The rest of the article focuses on two proteins in particular that could get disrupted through glyphosate substitution, and I will explain how this disruption can lead to a runaway phosphorylation cascade resulting in cancer. I will conclude with an urgent request that we change our agricultural methods towards renewable organic solutions, in order to protect future generations from harm.

Let $289 million jury award stand in Monsanto case By Neil Young and Daryl Hannah

We were among the millions of citizens who felt a surge of optimism that justice might actually prevail on Aug. 10 when a San Francisco Superior Court jury awarded a historic $289 million verdict against the agrochemical conglomerate Monsanto.

On Wednesday, we learned that a California judge is considering taking away that jury award for punitive damages.

When we learned that Dewayne “Lee” Johnson had taken Monsanto to court saying he got his terminal non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma from on-the-job exposure to Monsanto’s ubiquitous weed killer, Roundup, we were so captured by Johnson’s battle that we traveled to San Francisco to watch the trial. Would democracy finally prevail? Or would Monsanto again find a way to subvert the justice system?

Johnson’s was the first of some 4,000 similar claims headed for courts across America.

Initially, we were discouraged because the judge appeared to be bending over backward to help Monsanto. California Superior Court Judge Suzanne Bolanos carefully screened the jury pool to exclude all individuals who had been exposed to negative articles about Monsanto, or who had shown the least disapproval of the company. She unseated 35 jurors in all, including many who said that they could be fair and impartial. The 12 who issued the verdict were those who showed no predisposition against Monsanto.

During trial, Judge Bolanos consistently sided with Monsanto on the company’s evidentiary objections. At Monsanto’s request, Judge Bolanos deemed any mention of Monsanto’s genetically modified crops off-limits during the trial. Judge Bolanos forbade Johnson’s lawyer from showing the jury Monsanto’s internal studies showing that Roundup caused kidney tumors in mice; that the chemical easily penetrates the body through the skin; and that Monsanto had a flimflam system in place for killing unfavorable scientific studies by independent and government scientists. Judge Bolanos even gave a “curative instruction” telling the jury that Monsanto had never manufactured Agent Orange. That statement was simply not true — however the judge deemed the instruction necessary to neutralize potential bias from statements made about Agent Orange by dismissed jurors in front of their fellow jurymen.

Despite those restrictions, Johnson’s jury heard evidence that, for four decades, Monsanto maneuvered to conceal Roundup’s carcinogenicity by capturing regulatory agencies, corrupting public officials, bribing scientists, ghostwriting science and engaging in scientific fraud. The jury found that these activities constituted “malice, fraud and oppression” warranting $250 million in punitive damages.

We were among the many who applauded the verdict as a triumph for democracy.

However, California judges have the power to reduce, or even eliminate, a jury award under a rule intended to restrain runaway juries who arrive at verdicts driven by passion or prejudice.

Judge Bolanos purposefully selected the Monsanto jurors because of their lack of prejudice. At the trial, we saw a jury that seemed curious, intensely attentive and calmly deliberative. The jury was highly educated and took copious notes. Michael Baum, an attorney for the plaintiff, “I’ve never seen a jury so diligent.” The jurors would be shocked to know that the product of their weeks of careful consideration, and three days of deliberation, could be thrown out at the whim of a judge who disagrees with the verdict.

These hard-working Americans, gave up their jobs, businesses and families for two months to perform their civic duty as jurors. If a judge intervenes to alter their verdict, then what, after all, is the point of having jurors?

The task of disrupting a 50,000-year-old agricultural industry — transferring it from labor intensive and organic to chemical intensive — has required Monsanto to subvert democracy, and the company has a reputation for somehow manipulating public officials, regulators and courts — and an uncanny record of winning lawsuits.

All of us should be concerned. At this time in history when our democratic institutions are under assault by corporate power, such an action will send a signal to Americans that their service on a jury is meaningless and that corporations like Monsanto are above the law.

Yelken said to stop stocking Roundup, he needed to find an alternative that worked. Many organic products he had tried would weaken weeds, he said, but not kill them. Emerson recommended agricultural vinegar, which the store now has a large amount of on the shelves. He tried it out.

“Sure enough, in a day it had killed the weeds,” he said. “I now have it, an organic alternative that is effective.”

Seneff: “Cornell "Alliance for Science" is actually an "Alliance for Monsanto" heavily funded by the Gates Foundation.”

Cornell Alliance for Science is a PR Campaign for the Agrichemical Industry

Despite its academic-sounding name and affiliation with an Ivy League Institution, the Cornell Alliance for Science is a public relations campaign to promote genetically engineered foods and pesticides. With $12 million in funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Cornell Alliance for Science claims to be working to “restore the importance of scientific evidence in decision-making,” however, the examples in this fact sheet show that the group:

Misleads the public with inaccurate information about science;Elevates unreliable messengers who make false and unscientific claims; and,Partners with front groups that have worked with the tobacco industry or chemical industries to manufacture doubt about science that raises health concerns.The evidence suggests the Cornell Alliance for Science is using Cornell’s name, reputation and authority to promote the talking points and political agenda of the world’s largest agrichemical corporations.

The Gates Foundation helped launch the Cornell Alliance for Science in 2014 as an effort to “depolarize the charged debate” around genetically modified foods (GMOs). The Gates Foundation Deputy Director Rob Horsch, who worked for Monsanto Company for 25 years, leads the foundation’s agricultural research and development strategies, which have drawn criticism for relentlessly promoting GMOs and agrichemicals in Africa over the opposition of Africa-based groups and social movements, and despite many concerns and doubts about genetically engineered crops across Africa.1

Now on to positive news! There has been some outstanding progress in raising awareness of the dangers of glyphosate in the last two weeks; evidence that the public and scientists are slowly catching on to the problems with my namesake chemical and the need for activism to correct the misrepresentation of safe food levels.

I’ve been legit stressing about the future diversity of our collective microbiomes, which are murdered daily by glyphosate, antibiotics, and other toxins. I’m a miserable cocktail-party conversationalist these days. Check out this proposal for protecting against total extinction of some of our beneficial bacteria by creating something of a savings bank of gut bacteria to access and grow back in the future.Many food brands petitioned the EPA this week to ban pre-harvest glyphosate spraying! Now we’re talking some big, glorious change. GG opinion is that this pre-harvest spraying was likely the culprit behind the exploding gluten intolerance epidemic. Interestingly, the Environmental Working Group reports that the FDA has glaringly not been testing the glyphosate levels of wheat and oats, which are subjected to pre-harvest spraying and likely have high levels of glyphosate residue.

Celebrate! Bloomberg journalists reported: “Bayer AG’s defense of Roundup weed killer may take a hit after an academic journal said Monsanto Co. didn’t fully disclose its involvement in published research finding the herbicide safe. A correction issued by Critical Reviews in Toxicology, a journal that analyzes health risks of chemicals, may bolster arguments that Monsanto, acquired by Bayer this year, ghost-wrote safety reviews as lawyers try to convince juries that Roundup causes cancer.” It’s not as extensive a correction as most would like, but it is a solid step towards acknowledging Monsanto’s pervasive corruption of academic journals…

"The authors of this study, as quoted in this article, are ignoring established scientific principles and evidence in arriving at their conclusion that the levels of glyphosate residues found in the pet foods are 'within a range that would be deemed safe for humans'...”

Denise and Laira have an in depth discussion with Dr. Stephanie Seneff, Senior Research Scientist at MIT- an expert in the poison glyphosate, that is EVERYWHERE.

We will also discuss:&#128312;What/Where Is It?&#128312;Glyphosate & Vaccine Injury&#128312;Glyphosate in “Organics” & Supplements&#128312;Specific Detoxification Approaches&#128312;Taking Action&#128312;Thinking Outside the Box &#128312;and MORE!--*Note: Please excuse the technical issues at the very end, as it was our very first conferenced *LIVE*

Today, the Miami Beach City Commission passed a resolution directing the city manager to ban the use of herbicides containing glyphosate by all city employees and contractors in the performance of landscaping and maintenance work on all city-owned properties.

“The movie Vaxxed has done a great service to inform the public of a potential link between the MMR vaccine and autism. I have been aware of this link for many years, after having studied the FDA's VAERS database of vaccine events, with a specific focus on potential autism links. MMR is much more frequently associated with mentions of autism than the other vaccines administered at the same age (P=0.007). Furthermore, MMR in the second half of the database (from 2003 to 2016) is associated with many more severe adverse events, including autism, than was the MMR vaccine during the early half, despite the fact that, to my knowledge, the formulation has not changed. MMR contains neither mercury nor aluminum, two ingredients in other vaccines that are highly neurotoxic. However, MMR has significantly more gelatin than the other vaccines, and that is its Achilles' heel. In this talk, I will explain how glyphosate contamination in the vaccine, most likely from the gelatin, is leading to an autoimmune attack on the myelin sheath, which disrupts long-distance transport among nerve fibers, contributing to autism.”

Several years ago, I discovered that a genetically-engineered glyphosate-resistant tobacco seed had been developed and patented [1]; however, it is very difficult to find out what percentage of the tobacco crops are actually grown from these engineered seeds. One anecdotal answer to this question comes from the recently released documentary, Genetically Modified Children, produced and directed by Juliette Igier and Stephanie Lebrun. This movie describes the severe health issues that afflict the children of agricultural workers who live surrounded by glyphosate-resistant tobacco crops produced for sale exclusively to the tobacco company, Philip Morris. The farmers who were interviewed readily admitted that Philip Morris would most likely reject their product if they did not use glyphosate to control weeds and Bayer’s insecticide Confidor to control insects.

The documentary reveals the severe physical deformities, mental disabilities and cancers the children of these tobacco farmers are experiencing, and it offers the rather audacious hypothesis that glyphosate is inducing genetic mutations in the children of these farmers. Could they be right?

In the remainder of this article, I will first describe some of the serious health issues of the children who live near the tobacco fields, as portrayed in the documentary. After a short section about correlations between glyphosate and various diseases, I will discuss, in the following three sections, both the evidence that glyphosate causes birth defects, infertility, developmental issues, DNA damage and cancer, and the plausible biological mechanisms that could explain a link. The next section is devoted to describing the evidence that glyphosate can get into proteins by mistake in place of the coding amino acid glycine, which I now believe is its main mechanism of insidious cumulative toxicity. The rest of the article focuses on two proteins in particular that could get disrupted through glyphosate substitution, and I will explain how this disruption can lead to a runaway phosphorylation cascade resulting in cancer. I will conclude with an urgent request that we change our agricultural methods towards renewable organic solutions, in order to protect future generations from harm.

According to documents obtained by the Texas Observer and submitted by Brashears to her employer, Texas Tech University, Brashears has several financial relationships with corporations that meet the standard of “Significant Business or Financial Interests.”

These ties would create conflicts-of-interest for her as head of FSIS, or as an academic:

Would you like your local government to ban Monsanto’s carcinogenic Roundup herbicide?

Your local government has had that power since 1991, when the Supreme Court ruled that the Federal law regulating the manufacture, sale and use of pesticides permitted local governments to impose more stringent regulations of their own.

Ever since, Monsanto has been pressuring Congress to strip local governments of that right.

In exchange, the House of Representatives’ version of the Farm Bill, written by House Agriculture Committee Chairman Mike Conaway (who has taken $10,000 from Monsanto this year) includes language that would prohibit local governments from restricting pesticide use on private property.

If the Farm Bill conference committee decides to include this provision in the final version of the Farm Bill, local pesticide bans in two states, Maine and Maryland, would be overturned and could never be attempted again anywhere in the country.

The new paper, “Agrichemicals and antibiotics in combination increase antibiotic resistance evolution” is published online in the peer-reviewed journal PeerJ on October 12 and can be downloaded without charge from here: https://peerj.com/articles/5801/

This means that, at any time, GW Pharmaceuticals, the manufacturer of the CBD drug, can ask the FDA to remove cheap CBD oil supplements from the market, and the only option consumers will have is their new drug that costs $32,500 a year. This hasn't happened yet, but GW could simply be waiting for the market for CBD oil to grow--which it is. When it reaches a tipping point, then GW can ask the FDA to remove all the CBD supplements, and wait for the cash to roll in from consumers who don't have any other choice.

The same goes for L-glutamine, a supplement that can be bought for $10 a bottle; the drug, Endari, will reportedly cost $40,000 a year.

We need legislation that protects CBD oil, L-glutamine, and other natural substances from being turned into drugs by eliminating the market exclusivity that drug companies get when a new drug investigation is on a dietary ingredient currently being sold in the market as a dietary supplement. These rules should apply retroactively to protect CBD oil and other substances like pyridoxamine that have already (or are likely to be) removed before this legislation becomes law.

Until we close this loophole, we will see drug companies continue to turn our natural dietary supplements into drugs. News headlines are filled with Phase II or Phase III drug trials failing; Big Pharma is in search of a sure thing, and what could be better than supplements that have demonstrated health benefits? The FDA will not protect us--they're in on it! More drugs mean more user fees--more money--for the agency, so don't expect the FDA to defend our access to supplements.

Is Wi-Fi in Schools Harming Our Children? The Testimony of Rodney Palmer

So, we were right! Our kids were sick at school and nowhere else. There was no mold problem, no recent renovation, chemical building materials. Only a newly installed massive WIFI system. They measured and found that radiation created by the WIFI exceeded Safety Code 6 thermal threshold by 34%. And that explained how my son came home from school with hot ears every day. He was being cooked by microwaves.

School WIFI operates at 2.4 GHz, the same frequency as a microwave oven.

A article by the scientist who created GMO potatoes for Monsanto and Simplot. Now after he’s retired, collecting his pension or patent checks, he’s living a clean life on the farm and sorry he did this. He wants you to buy his book. Glad that he’s speaking out, but pissed off at the same time. McDonald’s will be serving these potatoes. Sysco will be delivering these potatoes to your child’s/grandchild’s school.

Seneff: “This article is short but very instructive about the dangers of GMOs. One man's journey into the GMO world and back out again. He understands perhaps more than anybody why GMO engineering is a bad idea.”

Genetic engineering isn’t everyone’s childhood dream. Even I didn’t care for it when I started studying biology at the University of Amsterdam, but my professor explained it was an acquired taste and the best option for a good job. So, I suppressed my doubts and learned to extract DNA from plants, recombine the DNA in test tubes, reinsert the fusions into plant cells, and use hormones to regenerate new plants.

People say that love is blind, but I started loving what I did blindly. Or, perhaps, what started as an acquired taste soon became a dangerous addiction. Genetic engineering became part of me.

After I received my PhD, I went to the University of California in Berkeley to help develop a new branch of genetic engineering. I isolated several disease resistance genes from wild plants, and demonstrated, for the first time, that these genes could confer resistance to domesticated plants. Monsanto liked my work and invited me to lead its new disease control program in St. Louis in 1995.

I should not have accepted the invitation. I knew, even then, that pathogens cannot be controlled by single genes. They evolve too quickly around any barrier to infection. It takes about two to three decades for insects and plants to overcome a resistance gene, but it takes only a few years, at most, for pathogens to do the same.

I did accept the invitation, though, and the next six years became a true boot camp in genetic engineering. I learned to apply many tricks about how to change the character of plants and I learned to stop worrying about the consequences of such changes.

In 2000, I left Monsanto and started an independent biotech program at J.R. Simplot Company in Boise, Idaho. Simplot is one of the largest potato processors in the world. It was my goal to develop GMO potatoes that would be admired by farmers, processors, and consumers. Genetic engineering had become an obsession by then, and I created at least 5,000 different GMO versions each year—more than any other genetic engineer. All these potential varieties were propagated, grown in greenhouses or the field, and evaluated for agronomic, biochemical, and molecular characteristics.

The almost daily experience I suppressed was that none of my modifications improved potato’s vigor or yield potential. In contrast, most GMO varieties were stunted, chlorotic, mutated, or sterile, and many of them died quickly, like prematurely-born babies.

It was as hard for me to consider that my GMO varieties might be corrupted as it is for parents to doubt the perfection of their children. Our assumption was that GMOs are safe. But my pro-biotech filter eventually wore thin and finally shattered entirely.

I identified some minor mistakes and had my first doubts about the products of my work. I wanted to re-evaluate our program and slow it down, but it was too little too late. Business leaders were involved now. They saw dollar signs. They wanted to expand and speed-up the program, not slow it down.

I decided to quit in 2013. It was painful to leave behind the major part of my adult life.

The true scope of my errors became obvious to me only after I had relocated to a small farm in the mountains of the Pacific Northwest. By this time Simplot had announced the regulatory approval of my GMO varieties. As the company began to plan for quiet introductions in American and Asian markets, I was breeding plants and animals independently, using conventional methods. And since I still felt uncomfortable about my corporate past, I also re-evaluated the about two hundred patents and articles that I had published in the past, as well as the various petitions for deregulation.

Not so much biased anymore, I easily identified major mistakes.

“With the mistake your life goes in reverse.Now you can see exactly what you didWrong yesterday and wrong the day beforeAnd each mistake leads back to something worse.”(James Fenton)

For instance, we had silenced three of potato’s most conserved genes, assuming that the three genetic changes would each have one effect only. It was a ludicrous assumption because all gene functions are interconnected. Each change had indeed caused a ripple effect. It should have been clear to me that silencing the ‘melanin gene’ PPO would have numerous effects, including an impairment of potatoes’ natural stress-tolerance response. Similarly, asparagine and glucose are among the most basic compounds of a plant, so why did I believe I could silence the ASN and INV genes involved in the formation of these compounds? And why did nobody question me?

Another strange assumption was that I had felt able to predict the absence of unintentional long-term effects on the basis of short-term experiments. It was the same assumption that chemists had used when they commercialized DDT, Agent Orange, PCBs, rGBH, and so on.

The GMO varieties I created are currently released under innocuous names, such as Innate, Hibernate, and White Russet. They are described as better and easier-to-use than normal potatoes and to contain fewer bruises, but the reality is different. The GMO potatoes are likely to accumulate at least two toxins that are absent in normal potatoes, and newer versions (Innate 2.0) additionally lost their sensory qualities when fried. Furthermore, the GMO potatoes contain at least as many bruises as normal potatoes, but these undesirable bruises are now concealed.

There are many more issues, and some of them could have been identified earlier if they had not been covered-up by misleading statistics in the petitions for deregulation. How could I have missed the issues? How could I have trusted the statisticians? How could the USDA have trusted them? My re-evaluation of the data clearly shows that the GMO varieties are seriously compromised in their yield potential and in their ability to produce normal tubers.

Unfortunately, most GMO potatoes end-up as unlabeled foods that are indistinguishable from normal foods. Consumer groups would have to carry out PCR tests to determine if certain products, including fries and chips, contain or lack the GMO material.

Given the nature of the potato industry, the most common potato varieties, such as Russet Burbank and Ranger Russet, will soon be contaminated with GMO stock.

I have now summarized the new conclusions of this past work (without disclosing company secrets—I am bound by confidentiality agreements) in a book, entitled ‘Pandora’s Potatoes.’ This book, which is now available on Amazon, explains why I renounce my work at Simplot and why the GMO varieties should be withdrawn from the market. It is a warning and a call for action: a hope that others will step forward with additional evidence, so that the public, with its limited financial means, has a chance to counter the narrow-mindedness of the biotech industry.

My book describes the many hidden issues of GMO potatoes, but GMO potatoes are not the exception. They are the rule. I could just as well have written (and may write) about the experimental GMO varieties we developed at Monsanto, which contains an antifungal protein that I now recognize as allergenic, about the disease resistance that caused insect sensitivity, or about anything else in genetic engineering.

On May 3rd 2018 the columnist Michael Gerson wrote in the Washington Post: “Anti-GMO is anti-science.” His statement was echoed by Mitch Daniels, his colleague, who added, “[It] isn’t just anti-science. It’s immoral.” But these two columnists are not scientists. They don’t understand the level of bias and self-deception that exists among genetic engineers. Indeed, anyone who is pro-science should understand that science is meant to study nature, not to modify it—and certainly not to predict, in the face of strong evidence, the absence of unintended effects.

The real anti-science movement is not on the streets. It is, as I discovered, in the laboratories of corporate America.

Seneff: “Anthony Samsel has updated his GoFundMe page. He provides some information here on the latest research he's doing testing various tissue samples and enzymes for glyphosate contamination. He's finding glyphosate in spinal discs and baby teeth, for example. We're working on a new paper where some of these results will be included. These tests are expensive and I'm sure he'd appreciate some help with the funding, if you're so inclined.”

GLYPHOSATE RESEARCH BY SAMSEL ENVIRONMENTAL AND PUBLIC HEALTH SERVICES

We have updated our page and expanded our research program and in need of donations for additional lab equipment and supplies. Initially, $15,000 is needed to continue the glyphosate enzyme inhibition and protein work. An LC/MS (liquid chromatography mass spec) AB Sciex API Triple Quad 4599 with Schimadzu Prominence XR costs approximately $125,000.00 used. Science is not cheap and for independent work this will take a village to attain, hence a request for donations. This equipment will be used for our continued independent research into Glyphosate and other pesticide contamination of human proteins and those of other animals. Samsel Environmental and Public Health Services is continuing this original research which has now expanded to the testing and identification of glyphosate in human proteins.

Research scientist, Anthony Samsel explains: "Glyphosate the active ingredient in Roundup herbicides used in agriculture, is a synthetic amino acid that participates in biology. It becomes part of our proteins directly affecting our health. Glyphosate is a causal agent in many, many diseases including cancer. Glyphosate is one of the most ubiquitous toxins on the planet. Most food sold in the US and Canada is contaminated with glyphosate and contamination is increasing steadily in other parts of the world where it is used in food production. Glyphosate may in fact be a major cause in the rise of all modern diseases."

Several years ago, it was Samsel who first discovered in the lab that glyphosate inhibits the enzymes of humans and other animals as well as bioaccumulates in humans, by passing up the food chain through contaminated diet. Samsel also found that this could affect the quality of experimental results of scientific research studies which use animals fed glyphosate contaminated diets. He followed glyphosate from contaminated diets into the proteins of pigs, cattle, horses and laboratory animals and was the first to identify and publish results of glyphosate contamination of pet foods and lab chows using HPLC MSMS lab analysis. "People’s pets are like family members and they are getting sick at alarming rates particularly from pesticides in foods used to make pet food products." said Samsel. Some of those results were published in 2015 in the paper Glyphosate pathways to modern diseases IV: cancer and related pathologies and can be found at this link: https://www.researchgate.net/publication...ted_pathologies

His work has found that Glyphosate becomes part of the proteins of humans and other animals corrupting the protein structure and function as well as inhibiting vitally important human digestive enzymes like lipase and compromising function. It was Samsel that first alerted US agencies that Glyphosate affects the microbiota which make up to 70% of the immune system. These symbiotic microbes provide nutrients and manufacture essential B vitamins necessary for health. Such interference by glyphosate leads to malabsorption and inflammation which in turn leads to numerous diseases including cancer. Samsel's find that glyphosate inhibits the human digestive enzyme lipase is of great importance, because lipase is essential to our ability to properly digest and use fats from the diet. Its impairment leads to numerous diseases, often with fatal consequences.

This current work with proteins including enzymes by laboratory experiments and analysis is very costly and the reason we are raising money to continue the research which is ongoing and ever expanding. We quantify levels of Glyphosate contamination from human and animal tissues using ELISA and EPA approved methods of GC and High Performance Liquid Chromatography , (HPLC MSMS). Results are periodically published in peer-reviewed journals under the Samsel and Seneff glyphosate papers series. Samsel was first to identify Glyphosate as part of the proteins of animals and humans and even quantified glyphosate in the teeth of children and most recently in the spinal disc of a 40 year old patient diagnosed with age related spinal degeneration as well as the keratins of many other human subjects. We hope that this research may now lead to answers for the cause of degenerative bone diseases which often require hip and knee replacement surgery. Previously, Samsel found that glyphosate becomes part of and including the collagens and keratins of the structural proteins of pigs, cattle and horses. Samsel was the first to find glyphosate bioaccumulated in the structural proteins of humans.

In 2015, Samsel was the first to test using HPLC MSMS and find glyphosate in the bodies of honey bees both live sick and dead from hives suspected of Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) as well as the honey and bee bread from the hives. This was reported in Glyphosate VI of the Samsel and Seneff series and can be found at this link: https://www.researchgate.net/publication...ogical_diseases

Samsel also found and extracted the damning cancer evidence against Monsanto from their trade secret studies for attorney's suing Monsanto in California. The trial first of its kind found for the plaintiff awarding a judgement of $289 million dollars. However, the case is currently under appeal the affected victim may never live long enough to realize his payment award. The same evidence was provided to the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (CA OEHHA), as well as information concerning Glyphosate's carcinogenic contaminants that can cause cancer. The extracted evidence from Monsanto documents shows that Glyphosate only caused Lymphoma in the Glyphosate treated animals of the company's 2-year animal studies.https://oehha.ca.gov/media/dockets/8594/...nes_pdf_002.pdf

Samsel is also conducting independent agricultural field studies and test experiments with over 50 varieties of Genetically Engineered corn from Monsanto, DOW, Dupont and Syngenta. The purpose of these experiments is to determine potential differences between genetically engineered varieites and non-engineered varieties. Assessing possible differences in mineral, fatty acids, vitamin content or anything that may affect human health or the environment. So far, substantial differences between genetically engineered varieties and those that are not genetically engineered have been found and especially differences in mineral uptake, fatty acid content and vitamin isomers. These results will be published at the conclusion of the work at a later date.

Having the same field, soils, moisture and environmental conditions comparing GM with Non-GM Heirloom varieties can show the differences in mineral, vitamin and fatty acid composition between genetic variants.

Changes in the isomers of fatty acids and vitamins and including mineral deficiencies or over expression may cause biological harm. These experiments will help us to understand these potentials.

All samples of each are analyzed by HPLC MSMS in the lab to determine what the differences are and quantify their composition.

Other relevant academic papers which we have written about Glyphosate are available at these links:

“The most important thing to realize is that you cannot wash glyphosate off food since it is incorporated into each cell of the plant.” Dr. Jill Carnahan, M.D.

“Children do not have the enzymes in their livers to detox and break down toxins, especially infants and the unborn children. There are NO safe levels.” Andre Leu, President IFOAM, Australia at the Monsanto Tribunal

“*Please don’t be a smartypants and say, “Hey, all crops are genetically modified”. Yes, yes, we have been selectively breeding plants for thousands of years. We all know that. But the term “GMOs” refers to the recent development of “gene splicing” and the development of transgenic crops, creating forms of life that nature, or selective breeding, could never have created. Jonathan Foley, Ph.D https://globalecoguy.org/zombie-gmo-myths-a59123a403f2

“If we are going to live so intimately with these chemicals--eating and drinking them, taking them into the very marrow of our bones--we had better know something about their nature and their power.” Rachel Carson, Silent Spring

“...It’s at the beginning of life, it’s at the end of life. The really creepy thing is there’s a lot of studies coming out, cutting edge stuff, showing epigenetics, showing that there’s damage that occurs to a parent, but you don’t see the results of that damage until a generation or two afterwards, so who knows what’s going to happen to the children.” Brent Wisner, attorney for Dwayne Lee Johnson. https://www.facebook.com/HighWireTalk/videos/2157052507846542

Stand With Jurors Against Monsanto! Petition

Charlie Kaupp, Juror #11, wrote:

[O]n August 10th, the jury spoke unanimously on every one of your verdict questions except the one about the amount of punitive damages (and that one was eleven-to-one). Monsanto requested a jury trial, as is their right. The fact that sixteen San Francisco citizens gave up six weeks to participate in the justice system with honor and integrity, only to have our verdict overruled, is an insult to our intelligence and disrespectful of our time, not to mention disrespectful to the process and institution of trial by jury.

Monsanto Jury in Historic Revolt Against Judge Attempting to Toss Out Their Unanimous Verdict

Howard commented to me on his impression of the impact of corporations that he gained by being a part of the Monsanto Trial. “I went into the trial not knowing a lot about Monsanto and it was the evidence at the trial that convinced me this corporation cannot be trusted,” he said. “This was a wake-up call. Being on the jury changed my life. I was interested in the environment before, but this was like, ‘Oh ok... it’s time to get back to work.’ I was angry. I have had a reminder to myself to divest from fossil fuels for years, and after the Monsanto trial- I finally did it. I divested.”

He stated, “I learned at this trial, you cannot trust these corporations. They are putting the almighty dollar before human lives. When you see the evidence in the documents with your own eyes, and you see the people lying to you, when they are sworn in to tell the truth... then you have to do something. That is why I am speaking up now.”

Howard pointed out that he and the jury were instructed by the judge that they could disregard some or all of a witness's testimony based on their credibility. When they saw Monsanto's witnesses, how highly uncomfortable they were and other body languages, the juror determined, very carefully, that many were simply not credible. "When they were performing linguistic gymnastics, doing every they could to avoid the issue of their products causing cancer, we did not see them as credible."

…

The matter at hand is more than whether Monsanto will be held accountable in this one case, (there are 8,700 more lawsuits pending against them) but whether justice will be served. The real issue is one that strikes to the core of our independence and democracy... whether justice can be influenced by pressure from corporations, or not.

All parties agree that we were an exceptional jury. We were, in fact, praised by Monsanto, and you, your Honor, for our attention, intelligent questions, etc. Yet our integrity, intelligence, and common sense has been cleverly and openly attacked by inference. The idiopathy issue, the science, the non-economic damages issue, what is and what is not evidence, the higher bar for punitive damages, credibility of witnesses: I got it. I believe my fellow jurors got it. With all due respect, your Honor, I don’t see how this can go both ways. Monsanto can’t ask for a jury, state that we intelligently, and with diligence considered only the testimony and evidence, and methodically weighed that evidence— and then turn around and infer that we must have ignored your instructions and did not comprehend the evidence! It just doesn’t add up.

The possibility that, after our studious attention to the presentation of evidence, our adherence to your instructions, and several days of careful deliberations, our unanimous verdict could be summarily overturned demeans our system of justice and shakes my confidence in that system.

As one of the 12 jurors in the above-referenced case, I urge you uphold the original verdict on both punitive damages and future non-economic damages. Monsanto’s attorneys have asked you to serve as the “13th juror” and vacate a “flawed judgment” where the size of the award “demonstrates the significant prejudicial misconduct that inflamed this jury.” I see absolutely no basis or credibility behind the arguments used by Monsanto’s attorneys…

Finally, while your instructions regarding punitive damages were more strict (clear and convincing evidence rather than a “likelier than not” scenario, paired with the behavior being executed by a managing agent of Monsanto), we approached the questions using a very measured process based on the evidence we were presented. We found that certain evidence showed behavior that any reasonable member of our society would deem malicious and with the outcome of harming Mr. Johnson. I found the argument about what constitutes a “managing agent” at Monsanto to be unnecessary. Any reasonable professional with any experience in the workforce would be able to identify the “managing agents” within any workplace. It’s simple clues – titles like “director,” or responsibilities like managing toxicology for an entire portfolio of products – that made this obvious for us.

US FDA and Cornell University Reports Show Glyphosate Residues in Corn, Soybeans and Pet Food

Sustainable Pulse Director, Henry Rowlands, reacted to the FDA report; “The levels of glyphosate found in soybeans and corn are of great concern. In 1999, the EPA’s ‘safe level’ (MRL) for soybeans was raised from 0.1 mg/kg (100 ppb) to 20 mg/kg (20,000 ppb) in the USA and Europe. Likewise in 2004, the glyphosate MRL for soybean was raised from 0.2 mg/kg (200 ppb) to 10 mg/kg (10,000 ppb) in Brazil. A peer-reviewed study in 2014 suggested that these MRL adjustments were only made in response to actual observed increases in the glyphosate residue detected in GM HT soybeans.

Seneff: “I just came across this 2015 paper about a mutation substituting aspartatic acidfor a glycine residue in the enzyme that synthesizes the "universal sulfate donor" (PAPS). The authors specifically mention that a ""larger and negatively charged aspartic acid" in place of this highly conserved glycine residue would severely disrupt the enzyme function. Glyphosate is also larger and negatively charged. The mutation causes polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) in women due to excess androgen synthesis because sulfation of DHEA (its precursor) is impaired.”

Q: M. Hermosillo: “Stephanie, is there a relation of glyphosate with the deficiency of cholesterol sulphate and the resulting blocking of arteries?”

A: “Seneff I absolutely think so! Glyphosate is a multidimensional train wreck for sulfate. It block bile flow in the liver/gallbladder, which prevents cholesterol sulfate circulation via bile acids/ chylomicron. If glyphosate substitutes by mistake for glycine during protein synthesis, it can be predicted to disrupt enzymes involved with the synthesis of PAPS, the universal sulfate donor, and with the transfer of sulfate from PAPS to cholesterol and other sterols. This forces the liver to distribute cholesterol packaged up inside LDL particles rather than as the water-soluble cholesterol sulfate molecule. This causes elevated serum LDL - the so-called "bad cholesterol." Glyphosate would also disrupt the uptake of LDL into the tissues through glycine substitution, because the LDL receptor depends on glycine to be able to go to the cell membrane and retrieve cholesterol and fats from LDL.”

…

A: Seneff: “I do think that apple cider vinegar (I use Braggs' organic) is beneficial to clear glyphosate. Acetobacter are among the very few microbes that know how to break the C-P bond in glyphosate, and this allows them to break it down into harmless components. Other fermented foods would also work, such as kombucha, kefir, sauerkraut, etc.”

Seneff: “CKDu (chronic kidney disease of unknown origin) is now affecting agricultural workers in Florida. I believe that glyphosate is the most important factor in this disease, and I have published two papers, together with Laura Orlando, discussing the evidence and explaining plausible connections between glyphosate and CKDu.”

“Laura Orlando and I wrote two papers linking CKDu to glyphosate. The second one details how glyphosate substituting for glycine in multiple proteins can explain the disease. "Glyphosate Substitution for Glycine During Protein Synthesis as a Causal Factor in Mesoamerican Nephropathy" Pdf download available here:” https://www.omicsonline.org/open-access/...525-1000541.pdf

On the Trail of a Deadly Disease That Cuts Down Farmworkers in Their Prime

The kidney condition, which has claimed at least 20,000 lives in Central America, is showing up in the U.S.

Grandparents remember back in the day when you drove at night, you drove through bugs. Bugs would be splattered on the front of our parent’s cars and windshields. Bug zappers that came out in the late 80’s were a nightmare if you wanted to have your window open at night. Fast forward to 2014, my new neighbor has a bug zapper. I was so worried. I liked my windows open. There was rarely a zap. Where were all the bugs? Whether it’s chemicals or climate change, our kids have been damaged and many are too sick and tired to deal with what’s has been done to their health and their environment. Us grand people must do something.

Seneff: “Very grim news from the insect world. I'd bet my money on glyphosate as a major factor in the demise of insects, worldwide.”

‘Hyperalarming’ study shows massive insect loss

In 2014, an international team of biologists estimated that, in the past 35 years, the abundance of invertebrates such as beetles and bees had decreased by 45 percent. In places where long-term insect data are available, mainly in Europe, insect numbers are plummeting. A study last year showed a 76 percent decrease in flying insects in the past few decades in German nature preserves.

Similar things have happened across the Midwest and Mid-South over the past two years. From Mississippi to Illinois, people have noticed trees or other kinds of wild vegetation that show signs of damage from dicamba. The Environmental Protection Agency now has to decide whether farmers should be allowed to keep using this chemical in quite the same way. The agency's previous approval expires at the end of the year.

Seneff: “Significant new development! It's now possible to get your hair tested for glyphosate and - surprise! surprise! -- they're finding remarkably high levels in various hair samples. Still think glyphosate doesn't accumulate in the body?”

Glyphosate Found in Human Hair as Unique Testing Project Releases First Results

The unique project, which began in July 2018, has already discovered the world’s most used herbicide, glyphosate, in a number of hair samples at over 66 parts per billion (ppb), which is a much higher level than the average urine level of 3 ppb reported by the University of California San Francisco in 2016. The main metabolite of glyphosate, AMPA, was also found in some of the hair samples at even higher levels than glyphosate itself.

…

The Detox Project Director, Henry Rowlands, stated Wednesday; “Even at this early stage of testing we believe it is vital to warn the public and regulators that glyphosate is being found in human hair.

“The levels found are surprising to everyone involved, as we have been working on urine testing with university and commercial laboratories over the past four years and we have never seen such results.”

Q: J. A. : Stephanie Seneff, I also worry about what’s not coming out of the body and presenting in hair samples. Where else is it storing?

A: Seneff: “It's getting stored everywhere! Monsanto found the highest concentrations in the bone marrow. But also in liver, lungs, testes, brain, etc., etc. It gets inserted into proteins by mistake in place of the coding amino acid glycine (according to a theory with very strong support from the research literature).”

Michael Antonoiu: “As a fellow scientist who has publicly expressed concerns about the safety of GM crops and foods for many years, I wish to congratulate Dr Caius Rommens for having the courage to speak out on his misgivings about these products. It is exceptionally courageous given the inevitable attacks that will come his way from the GM biotech industry and its supporters. With his background in the GM crop industry the experience and insight he provides is hugely informative and impactful and I hope all those involved will take note.”

The Ex-Director of J.R. Simplot and team leader at Monsanto, Caius Rommens, has revealed the hidden dangers of the GMO potatoes he created, in a wide ranging interview for Sustainable Pulse, on the same day that his book ‘Pandora’s Potatoes: The Worst GMOs’ was released on Amazon.

How many years did you spend working on creating GM potatoes? Was this all lab-based work or did you get out to see the farms that were growing the potatoes?

During my 26 years as a genetic engineer, I created hundreds of thousands of different GM potatoes at a direct cost of about $50 million. I started my work at universities in Amsterdam and Berkeley, continued at Monsanto, and then worked for many years at J. R. Simplot Company, which is one of the largest potato processors in the world. I had my potatoes tested in greenhouses or the field, but I rarely left the laboratory to visit the farms or experimental stations. Indeed, I believed that my theoretical knowledge about potatoes was sufficient to improve potatoes. This was one of my biggest mistakes.

Have the GM potatoes you helped create been approved by the FDA and EPA in the U.S. or indeed elsewhere in the world?

It is amazing that the USDA and FDA approved the GM potatoes by only evaluating our own data. How can the regulatory agencies assume there is no bias? When I was at J.R. Simplot, I truly believed that my GM potatoes were perfect, just like a parent believes his or her children are perfect. I was biased and all genetic engineers are biased. It is not just an emotional bias. We need the GM crops to be approved. There is a tremendous amount of pressure to succeed, to justify our existence by developing modifications that create hundreds of millions of dollars in value. We test our GM crops to confirm their safety, not to question their safety.

The regulatory petitions for deregulation are full with meaningless data but hardly include any attempts to reveal the unintended effects. For instance, the petitions describe the insertion site of the transgene, but they don’t mention the numerous random mutations that occurred during the tissue culture manipulations. And the petitions provide data on compounds that are safe and don’t matter, such as the regular amino acids and sugars, but hardly give any measurements on the levels of potential toxins or allergens.

The Canadian and Japanese agencies approved our GMO potatoes as well, and approvals are currently considered in China, South Korea, Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore, Mexico, and the Philippines.

What was your role at Monsanto and J.R. Simplot?

I led a small team of 15 scientists at Monsanto, and I directed the entire biotech R&D effort at Simplot (up to 50 scientists). My initial focus was on disease control but I eventually considered all traits with commercial value. I published hundreds of patents and scientific studies on the various aspects of my work.

Why did you leave firstly Monsanto and then later J.R. Simplot?

I left Monsanto to start an independent biotech program at J.R. Simplot, and I left J.R. Simplot when my ‘pro-biotech’ filter was wearing thin and began to shatter; when I discovered the first mistakes. These first mistakes were minor but made me feel uncomfortable. I realized there had to be bigger mistakes still hidden from my view.

Why have you decided to reveal information about the failings of GM potatoes after spending many years creating them?

I dedicated many years of my life to the creation of GMO potatoes, and I initially believed that my potatoes were perfect but then I began to doubt. It again took me many years to take a step back from my work, reconsider it, and discover the mistakes. Looking back at myself and my colleagues, I believe now that we were all brainwashed; that we all brainwashed ourselves. We believed that the essence of life was a dead molecule, DNA, and that we could improve life by changing this molecule in the lab. We also assumed that theoretical knowledge was all we needed to succeed, and that a single genetic change would always have one intentional effect only.

We were supposed to understand DNA and to make valuable modifications, but the fact of the matter was that we knew as little about DNA as the average American knows about the Sanskrit version of the Bhagavad Gita. We just knew enough to be dangerous, especially when combined with our bias and narrowmindedness. We focused on short-term benefits (in the laboratory) without considering the long-term deficits (in the field). It was the same kind of thinking that produced DDT, PCBs, Agent Orange, recombinant bovine growth hormone, and so on. I believe that it is important for people to understand how little genetic engineers know, how biased they are, and how wrong they can be. My story is just an example.

Will GM potatoes not lead to larger yields and bigger tubers?

I somehow managed to ignore the almost daily experience that GM potatoes were not as healthy as normal potatoes. They were often misshapen, stunted, chlorotic, necrotic, and sterile, and many GM plants often died quickly. One of the reasons for this genetic inferiority is that GM potatoes are derived from ‘somatic’ cells, which are meant to live for only one season (to support a stem or leaf structure). These cells don’t have the genetic integrity to create new plants (like pollen cells and egg cells). So, by transforming somatic cells, we created GM potatoes that contained hundreds of genetic mutations, and these mutations compromised yield. Additionally, the genetic modifications often have ‘unintended’ effects that negatively affect both the agronomic performance and nutritional quality of a crop.

GM potatoes are meant to be bruise resistant, isn’t this a big benefit to farmers and food producers?

Normal potatoes easily develop damaged tissues that are entry points for pathogens and exit points for water. I believed that the GM potatoes were bruise resistant but now understand I was wrong. The GM potatoes bruise just as easily as normal potatoes, but the bruises are concealed. They don’t develop the dark color that helps processors identify and trim them. I didn’t understand that my potatoes were incapable of depositing melanin, a protective compound, when damaged or infected. More importantly, I didn’t understand that the concealed bruises accumulate certain toxins that may compromise the nutritional quality of potato foods.

Are the biotech traits in GM potatoes genetically stable?

A trait is stable only if it fits in the natural environment of the plant genome. If it doesn’t fit, which is often the case with GM crops, the trait may get silenced or recombined. My ex-colleagues at Syngenta and Monsanto often told me about their (under-reported) problems with GM corn and soybean, but none of their crops were as unstable as the GM potatoes. Two of the potato traits have already been lost and several others appear to be weakening.

Late blight resistance in GM potatoes has been sold as a major breakthrough, surely this is the case?

Late blight is one of the very few plant diseases that speak to the imagination, mostly because it caused major famines in Europe that forced millions of Europeans to migrate to the United States. But that was in the 1840s. Late blight is not a big issue where most potatoes are grown in the United States, which is in the arid Northwest, and late blight represents a manageable issue in the minor, more humid potato growing regions. Farmers there would like to have access to late blight resistant potatoes, but they would still have to worry about dozens of other diseases and pests that can be equally harmful.

My concern is that any attempt to promote the production of GM potatoes in humid regions (as vulnerable as Bangladesh and Indonesia) would actually increase rather than reduce disease issues. Furthermore, late blight is one of the most dynamic pathogens affecting agriculture. It is known to quickly evolve around any barrier to resistance. Therefore, the efficacy of a late blight resistance gene can never be guaranteed, and the resistance gene can be broken at any moment. In fact, some European and Middle American strains have already broken the resistance.

Are GM potatoes less carcinogenic, as suggested by the GMO industry?

I guess that many people will ask themselves: are potatoes carcinogenic? I don’t think there is any evidence for that. So, an even more interesting question is: why would GM potatoes be promoted as less carcinogenic?

Do GM potatoes include a legally acquired gene?

I mostly modified potatoes by using their own DNA. In other words, I used the DNA of a public variety to create a proprietary variety. This strategy may be ethically problematic but is legally acceptable. However, one of the genes that were used to create the GM potatoes is derived from a unique wild potato plant that grows in Argentina. I believe that the attainment and patenting of this gene without permission from Argentina was an act of biopiracy.

Is it possible for GM potatoes to cause gene-silencing in other potatoes or pollinating insects such as bees?

The problem with certain insects, including bees, is that they cannot degrade the small double-stranded RNAs that cause gene silencing. These double-stranded RNAs were intended to silence several potato genes in tubers, but they are likely to be expressed in pollen as well. So, when the pollen is consumed by bees, the double stranded RNAs in this pollen may silence bee genes that share inadvertent homology.

Your new book Pandora’s Potatoes, which is available to the public for the first time this week, includes many points as to why the GM potatoes you helped create should not be grown by farmers or eaten by the public. What would you like to say to the FDA and EPA?

The main problem about the current process for deregulation of GMO crops is that it is based on an evaluation of data provided by the developers of GMO crops. There is a conflict of interest. I propose that the safety of GMO crops is assessed by an independent group of scientists trained at identifying unintended effects.

Where can people find your new book ‘Pandora’s Potatoes’? The book is now available on Amazon.

Glyphosate Girl Kelly, who blogged the entire Monsanto Trial for 7 weeks, speaks with Moms Across America's Zen Honeycutt and moms about the Monsanto Trial verdict which may be overturned by Judge Bolanos of the San Francisco Supreme Court despite the unanimous vote of the jury.

It’s the first time RNA interference will be used to kill insect pests.

DvSnf7 dsRNA is an unusual insecticide. You don’t spray it on crops. Instead, you encode instructions for manufacturing it in the DNA of the crop itself. If a pesky western corn rootworm comes munching, the plant’s self-made DvSnf7 dsRNA disrupts a critical rootworm gene and kills the pest.

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The first product DvSnf7 dsRNA will show up in is SmartStax Pro, a line of genetically modified corn seeds made in collaboration between two agricultural giants, Monsanto and Dow. The RNAi part comes from Monsanto, which has its eye on a number of RNAi applications. Monsanto expects corn seed with RNAi to be on the market by the end of this decade.

What Congress Does Next on the Farm Bill Could Cost Farmers and Taxpayers Billions

Farm bill negotiators are considering taking an axe to the Conservation Stewardship Program, the crown jewel of the federal government's efforts to encourage farmers to adopt more sustainable practices.

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Maybe you’re not familiar with the farm bill (no one completely understands it), or maybe you’re more concerned with other happenings, like the current attack on science at the EPA. I can’t say I blame you. But if you like to eat food and drink clean water—and you want strong returns on your tax dollars—then listen up.

RFK, Jr.: “This global calamity demands a termination of all pesticides except those proven innocent. Companies like Bayer and #Monsanto should be regarded for what they are, criminal enterprises waging chemical warfare against our children.”

This group was created because many people have been asking where they could post their test results for glyphosate in their water, urine or home testing of food. Please post a picture if you can, but definitely the item name, the brand of food, zip code, city, state, and result. For instance: Gerber baby food, 92691, Mission Viejo CA 50-200 ppb. THANK YOU!

“Applying gene drives to food and agriculture turns biotech industry strategies on their head,” explains Jim Thomas, Co-Executive Director of ETC Group. “Previously GMO companies engineered the food crops. Now that consumers won’t buy GMO food, companies are coming to engineer the rest of the agricultural system instead – the weeds, the pests and the pollinators.”

“If spreading gene drives were to be released, they could pose an existential threat to organic, non-GMO and agroecological agriculture,” explains Peggy Miars, International Chair of IFOAM – Organics International, the umbrella organization for organic agriculture worldwide with close to 800 affiliates in 117 countries. “Any government who cares about protecting organic agriculture and the organic food market should move quickly to contain this threat.”

The study, just published in scientific journal PeerJ, comes three years after Heinemann and colleagues reported for the first time that formulations were linked to various responses by potentially pathogenic bacteria.

The researchers previously found that exposure to the herbicide products Roundup, Kamba and 2,4-D or the active ingredients alone most often increased resistance, and sometimes also increased susceptibility of potential human pathogens such as Salmonella enterica and E. coli, depending on the antibiotic.

The latest study showed how herbicide formulations combined with antibiotics increased the rate of antibiotic resistance development, by a change in the genetic makeup of the bacteria by a factor of tens of thousands.

"That is why we call the herbicides gasoline for a fire," Heinemann said.

How lobbyists for Monsanto led a "grassroots farmers'" movement against an EU glyphosate ban

“If you know your product is safe, you don’t have to use such methods. It really is a scandal. Sadly, this is fully in line with Monsanto’s behaviour throughout the whole glyphosate [relicensing] campaign.”

If a gene drive is inserted in the genome, the process of genetic engineering becomes self-organised and will replicate in each generation thereafter. The new genetic information can spread much faster within populations than would otherwise be the case under normal conditions. The proof of principle for such genetic chain reactions has been shown in yeast, mosquitoes, flies and more recently in mammals.

The Three Stooges of Science Denial: The Genetic Literacy Project, Sense About Science, and STATS

STATS, the GLP, and SAS claim to be all about promoting sound science in public debate and policy making, but their origins and personnel make it abundantly clear that they are not in the business of improving the quality of scientific discourse, but of running a public relations campaign aimed at manipulating and inhibiting scientific debate to serve corporate interests.

French President Emmanuel Macron made a campaign promise: to ban glyphosate, the weedkiller sold under the Roundup brand. But last week, his party’s lawmakers rejected an amendment to do that, raising accusations they are beholden to the farm lobby.

The jury found that Monsanto purposefully ignored warnings and evidence that Roundup causes cancer.

SAN FRANCISCO — A California judge on Monday upheld a jury's verdict that found that Monsanto's weed killer caused a groundskeeper's cancer, but she slashed the amount of money to be paid from $289 million to $78 million.

In denying Monsanto's request for a new trial, San Francisco Superior Court Judge Suzanne Bolanos cut the jury's punitive damage award from $250 million to $39 million, the same amount the jury awarded for other damages, for a total of $78 million.

Bolanos had earlier said she had strong doubts about the jury's entire punitive damage award. She gave DeWayne Johnson until Dec. 7 to accept the reduced amount or demand a new trial.

Johnson's spokeswoman, Diana McKinley, said he and his attorneys were reviewing the decision and hadn't decided the next step.

"Although we believe a reduction in punitive damages was unwarranted and we are weighing the options, we are pleased the court did not disturb the verdict," McKinley said.

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The judge reversed course Monday and said she was compelled to honor the jurors' conclusions after they listened to expert witnesses debate the merits of Johnson's claim.

Some jurors were so upset by the prospect of having their verdict thrown out that they wrote to Bolanos, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

GMO potato firm J.R. Simplot has published a statement responding to Dr Caius Rommens’s book, Pandora’s Potatoes, in which he renounced his GMO work and described the potential health and agronomic risks of the GMO potatoes he developed while working for the firm. Some of these potatoes, including the supposedly bruise-resistant Innate, have been commercialized in North America.

In its statement, Simplot calls Dr Rommens’s book “defamatory” and says it is “filled with false and misleading statements and speculation about the development and safety of our bioengineered potato varieties”. The statement focuses on smearing Dr Rommens’s reputation. It makes much of a mistake in his work that he has acknowledged and which led to his retraction of a scientific paper on which he was lead author. Simplot characterizes this mistake as “flaws” in his work that were “inexcusable”.

Simplot did not, however, properly address the technical and scientific points raised by Dr Rommens in his book. Below, Dr Rommens replies to J.R. Simplot.

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All I have done is write a book about the hidden issues of the GM potatoes that I had created in the past. In my book, I never criticized the J.R. Simplot company but accepted all the blame myself. I blamed myself not for what I had done intentionally, but for failing to see what I had done unintentionally.

The Simplot agbiotech team read the book and has evidently decided to try to make it – and me – look bad, while at the same time ignoring the scientific and technical issues it raised. Instead of taking the new, important insights as constructive feedback and an opportunity to address existing and potential problems with its GMO potatoes, it has trashed the book as being filled with “defamatory” statements.

This approach will not advance scientific knowledge but on the contrary seems calculated to shut down scientific discussion and investigation, as well as public debate, through a veiled legal threat. The more constructive way forward is for public scientists who are not beholden to agbiotech corporations to study the issues I mentioned.

It would be wonderful to determine the levels of a variety of toxins that could accumulate in GM potatoes that may contain hidden bruises and symptomless infections, to determine the effect of symptomless infections on the spread of plant diseases, to (again) confirm the yield drag caused by potato transformation, and to address all the other issues described in the book, and more. Statisticians would be useful as well to examine whether the statistics used in regulatory petitions are misleading. I will support such public research efforts in any way I can.

The major part of Simplot’s statement appears intended to depict me as a rogue scientist. No more am I the man who created an independent biotech effort supported by more than sixty patents, and who created the GM crops that are now commercialized, but I am described as someone who, over the course of twelve years leading the effort, made one mistake. Simplot places much emphasis on this mistake (a sequence error in a small fragment, which helps to transfer DNA from bacteria to plants but is not transferred itself), but it affected neither the patents generated on the GMO potatoes nor the potatoes themselves.

When I left Simplot, not yet sure how to come to terms with my past work, I requested that my name would not be tarnished. We had a handshake agreement on that. The way that Simplot now depicts me is false and inaccurate and clearly represents an attempt to tarnish my name.

The last part of Simplot’s statement is an attempt to address the technical and scientific issues I brought up in my book. However, what Simplot calls the “most egregious” of my “numerous false statements about Simplot and the Innate® potato” is not even in the book. It does not contain any statement that GM potatoes will contaminate normal potatoes, even though I believe they will and have since publicly said as much. The company declares that it currently grows its small acreage of GM potatoes as a closed-loop system. But there is no mention about the future. Indeed, I cannot believe that any agbiotech firm would commit to forever maintain an expensive, closed-loop system, especially if GM crops turn into important commodities.

In the statement, the Simplot team attempts to hide behind the meaning of words. When I express my concern about toxins, the team responds that it vigorously tested for toxins and found no issues. But the team knows quite well that the toxins I am concerned about are different from the one or two toxins that were tested by the company, such as acrylamide. Indeed, my book describes toxins that the company has never mentioned in its publications, such as alpha-aminoadipate, chaconine-malonyl, tyramine, a variety of pathogen-produced toxins, and so on.

And then there is the trait stability. Studying the company’s own data, I must conclude that two traits no longer work, that there is evidence for reversion of a third trait, and that a fourth trait appears to be declining in efficiency. Furthermore, a fifth trait, a disease-resistance gene (VNT), is known to be unstable: disease-resistance genes can be broken by evolving pathogens at any time.

The team also didn’t like me talking about the illegal acquisition of VNT. But according to Article 15 of The Convention on Biological Diversity, this gene belongs to Argentina. The team licensed the gene, but a licensed gene that was acquired illegally is still acquired illegally, just like a stolen painting is still stolen after it is (legally) purchased.

According to the team, I stated that the company “designed” GM potatoes to taste like cardboard and to conceal infections and bruises and undermine the health of consumers. This is untrue. I never criticized the company about anything. I only criticized one person, and that is me. And I criticized myself not for what I did but for what I failed to see. The fact of the matter is that I designed GM potatoes without realizing that the unintended effects of my modifications caused a decline in the sensory profile of fries, the concealment of bruises and infections in tubers, and the potential accumulation of toxins.

I have laid out my view of what needs to be done to answer the questions raised in my book. These questions will not be answered through veiled legal threats and attempts to ‘shoot the messenger’. It is now up to the public and the independent scientific community to continue to address them.

“...let’s look at the numbers, sir...let’s actually look at the rest and I showed it to him...and he goes “yea, that’s the average,” ...so sir, if the average is four percent every one of these mice studies...is outside the historical average, right? “Yea.” So earlier when you told this jury that they could disregard it because they're all within historical rate, that’s wrong? And he goes, “Yea, I misspoke.”

“You know it’s funny, Glyphosate and Roundup, they’re different things. People often don’t realize that. Glyphosate is one chemical in Roundup. Roundup actually has all these other chemicals. In fact, most of Roundup is these other chemicals. Some of its water. Fine, no one’s complaining about water, but the rest of it is surfactants and other sort of trace residue chemicals and those trace residue chemicals include fermaldahyde, dioxin, lots of stuff that we know is a problem. But putting that issue aside and this is going to blow your mind, it’s something that blows my mind whenever I tell people...to this day Monsanto has never conducted a long term carcinogenicity study on Roundup. They’ve only ever looked at Glyphosate. They’ve never looked at the actual thing, what people are using in the real world and, here’s the thing, when I asked them why...I got their toxicologist on the stand and I said why haven’t you done that? It’s seems like a no brainer. Why haven’t you done that in a rodent study? “Because all the rodents would die.” That was their answer...and the reason is because to give them the kind of doses that you would have to see would kill them...because Roundup is a heck of a lot more toxic than just Glyphosate and so the toxicity of the product is so severe that it would cause all these problems in the rats. It would kill them all. They wouldn’t have enough living to make it through the study and that’s why they haven’t done it…Now that’s not true, right? It’s toxic, but you can do the study, in fact there’s some researchers that are doing it right now in Europe. Right now that are actually designing...their actually going to do it.” Video 3, At 24:00, https://responsibletechnology.org/wisnerinterviews/watch-the-wisner-interviews/

Jeffrey Smith, IRT Founder interview with Brent Wisner, Esq.

Video 3: Monsanto’s Shocking Disregard for Science and Truth

In this interview, Wisner outlines Monsanto’s shocking manipulation and willful disregard of scientific evidence which proves the harm caused by Roundup. This video goes deep into the science of GMOs and pesticides, with Jeffrey Smith mining his decades of experience and Brent bringing his deep understanding gained from his trial research and preparation.

At about 21:00, Wisner speaking to Monsanto’s expert witness…

“...let’s look at the numbers, sir...let’s actually look at the rest and I showed it to him...and he goes, “yea, that’s the average.” ...so sir, if the average is four percent every one of these mice studies...is outside the historical average, right? “Yea.” So earlier when you told this jury that they could disregard it because there all within historical rate, that’s wrong? And he goes, “yea, I misspoke.”

At about 24:00...

“You know it’s funny, Glyphosate and Roundup, they’re different things. People often don’t realize that. Glyphosate is one chemical in Roundup. Roundup actually has all these other chemicals. In fact, most of Roundup is these other chemicals. Some of its water. Fine, no one’s complaining about water, but the rest of it is surfactants and other sort of trace residue chemicals and those trace residue chemicals include formaldehyde, dioxin, lots of stuff that we know is a problem. But putting that issue aside and this is going to blow your mind, it’s something that blows my mind whenever I tell people...to this day Monsanto has never conducted a long term carcinogenicity study on Roundup. They’ve only ever looked at Glyphosate. They’ve never looked at the actual thing, what people are using in the real world and, here’s the thing, when I asked them why...I got their toxicologist on the stand and I said why haven’t you done that? It’s seems like a no brainer. Why haven’t you done that in a rodent study? “Because all the rodents would die.” That was their answer...and the reason is because to give them the kind of doses that you would have to see would kill them...because Roundup is a heck of a lot more toxic than just Glyphosate and so the toxicity of the product is so severe that it would cause all these problems in the rats. It would kill them all. They wouldn’t have enough living to make it through the study and that’s why they haven’t done it…Now that’s not true, right? It’s toxic, but you can do the study, in fact there’s some researchers that are doing it right now in Europe. Right now that are actually designing...their actually going to do it.”

And towards the end, a study on Glyphosate was done that Monsanto said was incorrect. They offered to the study again, “for free.” Monsanto’s answer: no.

Over one year after initial tests, Moms Across America sent America's most popular orange juice brands to be tested again for the carcinogenic chemical glyphosate. The new test results, ranging from 2.99 ppb to 17.16 ppb, are not promising. Although the different brands, Tropicana, Minute Maid, Costco’s Kirkland Signature, and Stater Bros. had slightly lower levels of glyphosate weed killer than the first tests conducted a year ago, all still had detectable levels of glyphosate. In addition, Moms Across America added another sample, Florida’s Natural, and the results were not only among the highest of all the brands tested for glyphosate residues, the sample from the brand showed results almost 3 times higher than the previous year’s test results provided to another organization, showing an increase, rather than a decrease of the use of glyphosate herbicides.

Recently plaintiff Alexandra Axon, represented by Richman Law Group, sued Florida’s Natural for misleading the public by claiming their product is natural when in fact it contains glyphosate. The lawsuit is still pending.

But the verdict, even in its diminished form, provides hope that with continued pressure, with more trials, with more financial losses for Monsanto-Bayer, truth and science may one day prevail.

OCA, along with many other good organizations, is calling on schools throughout the country to ban Roundup, in honor of Johnson, a former school groundskeeper, who bravely stood up to Monsanto. Some schools have already stepped up to the plate, including California’s Benicia Unified School District, where Johnson worked before he was diagnosed with cancer.

We’ll have more soon on our campaign to get Roundup out of schools, and how you can help. For now, please take the following actions:

In "The Monsanto Papers: Poisoning the Scientific Well,"23 a paper published in The International Journal of Risk & Safety in Medicine, June 2018, Leemon McHenry describes the importance of this cache of documents:

"The documents reveal Monsanto-sponsored ghostwriting of articles published in toxicology journals and the lay media, interference in the peer review process, behind-the-scenes influence on retraction and the creation of a so-called academic website as a front for the defense of Monsanto products …

The use of third-party academics in the corporate defense of glyphosate reveals that this practice extends beyond the corruption of medicine and persists in spite of efforts to enforce transparency in industry manipulation."

Tell the National School Boards Association: No More Monsanto Roundup Weedkiller!

To be delivered to Frank C. Pugh, President, National School Boards Association, All National School Boards Association Board Members

As the organization representing the top decision-makers at U.S. school districts, you have a responsibility to millions of parents and school children to protect children from harm.

In light of the latest evidence that Monsanto’s Roundup weedkiller causes cancer, the National School Board Association must do these two things:

One, issue a formal policy statement advising all school districts to end the use of Roundup and all toxic agro-chemicals on school grounds.

Two, issue a formal policy statement advising all school districts to revamp their school lunch programs by transitioning to certified organic foods, in order to avoid serving foods contaminated with glyphosate and other pesticides.

I needed answers, and not simply for my own peace of mind. I was a groundskeeper for many years. It was not just a job for me but a livelihood, a labor that brought me peace and the gratification that comes with making things beautiful. When I realized that every day for years I had been spraying this chemical — sometimes 150 gallons of it a day — across playgrounds not unlike the ones my kid frequented, something in me was stirred to action. If I could prove it caused me harm, then perhaps I could give people a chance to protect themselves and their own children. Maybe I could give them the chance that was taken away from me.

He told EU Food Policy that those papers, except the most recent one, were quoted in his minority Opinion and were presented at EFSA working group meetings. But, he said, "They were all disregarded by toxicologists for irrelevant reasons, such as being performed using cell-based tests."

He accused EFSA of ignoring the issue of allergenicity by relying on tests that were recommended more than 15 years ago and never updated to fit the newer generation of GMOs.

He added that the Authority had also ignored "the progress made in the knowledge and mechanisms involved in the regulation/deregulation of the immune response".

Alarmingly, when asked in an official public records request submitted by Regeneration Vermont seeking information about the VAAFM’s efforts and programs to answer the urgent calls to reduce antibiotic use, Dr. Haas responded with the following: “There is not a program in place with the goal of reducing antibiotic use on dairy farms.”

Furthermore, when Regeneration Vermont asked Dr. Haas for records on overall antibiotic usage and trends in the state, she responded – in writing – with this: “The Agency does not monitor antibiotic purchases and sales or maintain records that quantify this data. As such, we do not have records responsive to this request.”

The secretary, Department of Agriculture, Punjab ordered on October 23, 2018 that the herbicide glyphosate would now be regulated in the state. The department has taken the step based on reports of adverse health effects of this chemical. PGIMER in Chandigarh has also provided evidence that the chemical is harmful.

Rounding Up Glyphosate: Toxicity Known Since the 80s—So Why Weren’t We Protected? By Brian S. Hooker, Ph.D.

As a society, our food supply and even our vaccines are awash in glyphosate, which should be of grave concern. One study has shown that 93% of individuals tested in the U.S. show levels of glyphosate in their urine. Average levels of glyphosate in urine of children in this study eclipsed 3.5 parts per billion. This is highly disconcerting given that another study shows glyphosate-related damage to the liver and kidneys of rats at levels as low as 0.05 parts per billion. Despite all this evidence, the U.S. EPA sticks to their claim that glyphosate is safe for consumption. As is the case with vaccines and other medical products, with our food supply, we simply cannot trust our government to tell us what is safe to put in our bodies.

Johnson said he wanted to use the platform he has been given to continue raising awareness about glyphosate. He is now advocating to get the product off every school campus and playground in California. The Benicia school district, his former employer, already said it would stop using glyphosate. He considers that a start.

The case could encourage consumers to change their habits and explore alternative ways to manage weeds, he said: “I’m hoping that it snowballs and people really get the picture and they start to make decisions about what they eat, what they spray in their farms.”

…

For Johnson, the case was never about “crumbling a company or taking down an empire”. “I hope [Monsanto] gets the message that people in America and across the world are not ignorant,” he said. “They have already done their own research.”

Bayer AG’s defense of Roundup weed killer may take a hit after an academic journal said Monsanto Co. didn’t fully disclose its involvement in published research finding the herbicide safe.

A correction issued by Critical Reviews in Toxicology, a journal that analyzes health risks of chemicals, may bolster arguments that Monsanto, acquired by Bayer this year, ghost-wrote safety reviews as lawyers try to convince juries that Roundup causes cancer.

Another Reason to End the 'Dirty Dairy' Industry: Contaminated Hamburgers

How sick are those cows? Colby writes:

Dairy cow health is becoming a major issue for the industry, giving rise to extra costs associated with replacing the burned out cows and concerns about meat containing residues of the increased medications being used. A recent Cornell University study found that mortality rates in U.S. dairy herds was over 10 percent a year. That means one out of every 10 cows in a herd is prematurely dying every year. In 2002, the dairy mortality rate was 3.8 percent. Something’s seriously wrong in the dairy barn.

Weakened from living under unhealthy, filthy, stressful conditions, many of those cows, destined for hamburger meat, become sick with Salmonella Newport. New Food Economy reports that “experts seem to agree that whenever Salmonella Newport turns up in ground beef—the exact scenario that lead to last week’s recall—dairy cows tend to be the culprit.”

Issues highlighted in the complaint include:* Lack of guidance on how to assess the risk of nutritionally-altered GM crops* Failure to properly assess health risks of altered oil content* Failure to protect vulnerable groups, including children and people with relevant health conditions

Lawyers: CRT Correction of Glyphosate Review Only Tells Half the Story

During a deposition, Heydens admitted that draft manuscripts of the glyphosate review were sent to him, and that he read “parts of them” before the paper was published. When asked whether or not he made dozens of edits to the manuscript, Heydens said, “I don’t recall.”

The Environmental Working Group, joined by food and nutrition companies including MegaFood, Ben & Jerry’s, Stonyfield Farm, MOM’s Organic Market, Nature’s Path, One Degree Organic Foods, National Co+op Grocers and Happy Family Organics, petitioned the Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday to sharply limit glyphosate residues allowed on oats and prohibit the pesticide’s use as a pre-harvest drying agent.

US FDA and Cornell University Reports Show Glyphosate Residues in Corn, Soybeans and Pet Food

In a separate peer-reviewed study, also released on Monday by Cornell University, levels of glyphosate were found in a range of pet foods.

The 18 dog and cat foods tested were all mixtures of vegetable and meat ingredients, and one product was certified GMO-free. The study found that all of the products contained glyphosate at concentrations ranging from approximately 80 to 2,000 micrograms of glyphosate per kilogram (ppb).

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Dr Michael Antoniou of King’s College London, who has conducted research on the health impacts of glyphosate herbicide, reacted in a quote for GM Watch; “The authors of this study, as quoted in this article, are ignoring established scientific principles and evidence in arriving at their conclusion that the levels of glyphosate residues found in the pet foods are “within a range that would be deemed safe for humans”.

“First, they do not acknowledge the well established principle of low dose toxicity, especially through endocrine disruption, which does not follow a linear ‘dose makes the poison’ model. Second, they ignore a large body of evidence that shows that daily intake of glyphosate well below what regulators have ruled as safe causes ill health to multiple organ systems such as the liver, kidney and reproductive system.”

RFK, Jr.: “Energized by the Johnson win, a snowballing series of courtroom challenges are now threatening the legacy and finances of Monsanto—and the future of a chemical that is ubiquitous around the globe.”

'The world is against them': new era of cancer lawsuits threaten Monsanto

“Monsanto needs to realize that we are not going to be silent any more,” said Barton, a third-generation farmer, who is part of a California lawsuit filed by the Baum Hedlund firm, which represented Johnson. “We are not going to roll over and play dead … People should be warned that this stuff is everywhere and we should be careful of this product.”

Barton, 69, said he also feared that his three sons could get sick due to their Roundup exposure.

“My dad exposed me to this. He never would’ve done that if he knew it was dangerous,” he added. “I have this guilt that I may have endangered my own sons.”

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Those outcomes could be devastating for Johnson and a setback for those fighting glyphosate. But cancer patients and families across the country will be able to push forward regardless of what happens in San Francisco, said David Levine, a University of California Hastings law professor.

“Even if Monsanto gets a complete victory here, it’s not going to stop other plaintiffs.”

Rather than suing for cash penalties, the suit seeks to force the companies to create an independent panel of scientists “tasked with thoroughly studying and confirming the health effects that can be caused by contamination of human blood with multiple PFAS materials.” Such a panel would parallel the C8 Science Panel, which was created by the earlier class action litigation in West Virginia. That panel, overseen by epidemiologists approved by lawyers from both sides in the suit, found six diseases to be linked with PFOA exposure, including testicular cancer and kidney cancer.

In an article written a few months before his death, Tomasi wrote about the silence and fear surrounding the suffering caused by fumigation, saying: “I do not want to swallow my words. I want to scream.” He talked about the numerous threatening phone calls he received for speaking out (presumably from area soy growers), and the corrupt collusion between governments and multinational corporations: “They are not business people, they are agents of death.” (Read an English translation of the article here).

#8. There are about 35 or more non-organic substances allowed as ingredients in or on products labeled as “organic,” (chlorine materials, phosphoric acid) thanks to the corrupt USDA, including certain chemicals used on organic crops (arsenic, lead salts).

#9. Assuming the label “Non-GMO” means the product is organic. Sure, Non-GMO is a quality, trusted label, but it’s not synonymous with certified organic.

Brain’s connection to immune system discovered: New study identifies lymphatic vessels on the brain

Lymphatic vessels are an integral communication network of the circulatory system. These vessels travel around the body carrying the lymph fluid which delivers white blood cells to various organs and drains harmful fluid to the lymph nodes. This process tells the immune system if an organ is under attack or is injured. This makes the lymphatic vessels very important in disease management.

First evidence of the body's waste system in the human brain discovered - 2017

By scanning the brains of healthy volunteers, researchers saw the first, long-sought evidence that our brains may drain some waste out through lymphatic vessels, the body's sewer system. The results further suggest the vessels could act as a pipeline between the brain and the immune system.

Seneff: “I missed this when it came out last August, but it is definitely worth reading. Very scary implications in terms of second and third generation effects. Could even be a threat to the long term survivability of the human species.”

In their study, Winchester and his team found that concentrations of atrazine in drinking water were highest in May and June when farmers sprayed their fields with the herbicide. They also found that birth defects peaked during the same months indicating a close correlation.

"We plotted water concentrations and birth defects, and they fit like a hat," Winchester said.

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But the most disturbing finding was that atrazine had epigenetic effects. Epigenetics is the theory that environmental factors, such as diet, lifestyle choices and pesticides can impact the health of people who are exposed to them and also their descendants. Human DNA, according to epigenetics, is not unchangeable; it can be altered by such environmental factors. Epigenetic changes can be imprinted on the DNA of a fetus during pregnancy according to Winchester.

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"We waited until the third generation, where no direct exposure (to atrazine) occurred, to ask if these epigenetic effects could be inherited, because there is no mechanism, no exposure, no toxicity that could explain a change in disease rates in the third generation. We found that 50 percent of offspring had multiple diseases, emotional and physical problems, hyperactivity, abnormal sperm, and premature puberty."

'The Guy Who Defended Company That Caused Worst Oil Spill in US History' Just Confirmed to Head DOJ's Environmental Division

"Clark's blatant hostility toward environmental protection is good news for polluters, but awful news for the rest of us," warned Environmental Working Group (EWG) president Ken Cook. "The guy who defended the company that caused the worst oil spill in U.S. history is not likely to aggressively go after corporate environmental outlaws."

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"Clark's appointment is a doubling down on the administration's strategy of retreating from the future and branding America as a petrostate while China steals our global energy, economic, and moral leadership, and the rest of the world moves forward," concluded environmental attorney Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

US FDA and Cornell University Reports Show Glyphosate Residues in Corn, Soybeans and Pet Food

In a separate peer-reviewed study, also released on Monday by Cornell University, levels of glyphosate were found in a range of pet foods.

The 18 dog and cat foods tested were all mixtures of vegetable and meat ingredients, and one product was certified GMO-free. The study found that all of the products contained glyphosate at concentrations ranging from approximately 80 to 2,000 micrograms of glyphosate per kilogram (ppb).

…

Dr Michael Antoniou of King’s College London, who has conducted research on the health impacts of glyphosate herbicide, reacted in a quote for GM Watch; “The authors of this study, as quoted in this article, are ignoring established scientific principles and evidence in arriving at their conclusion that the levels of glyphosate residues found in the pet foods are “within a range that would be deemed safe for humans”.

“First, they do not acknowledge the well established principle of low dose toxicity, especially through endocrine disruption, which does not follow a linear ‘dose makes the poison’ model. Second, they ignore a large body of evidence that shows that daily intake of glyphosate well below what regulators have ruled as safe causes ill health to multiple organ systems such as the liver, kidney and reproductive system.”

Seneff: “This article from last May is a good resource for figuring out which foods to avoid because they might be sprayed with glyphosate right before harvest.”

DOZENS of Food Crops Treated with Pre-Harvest Roundup (it’s not just wheat!)

The list of common crops desiccated with glyposate prior to harvest is shockingly long!

Seventy crops are on the current EPA list which runs from 2004-2013. The complete list of crops is shown in the images below taken from an EPA memo from October 2015. What’s more, when the list is compared with a prior data snapshot through 2011, it shows that glyphosate use by farmers for key food crops alarmingly continues to grow.

Glyphosate use by farmers averages 70% or more for some crops. These include almonds, walnuts, figs, plums, prunes, grapes, kiwi, lemons, grapefruit, pistachios, and pomegranates.

In filings last week in San Francisco federal court, where a new glyphosate trial is scheduled to begin on Feb. 25, 2019, Bayer said the “jury pool likely has grown more hostile” due to negative media coverage following the Johnson verdict.

Joint Commissioner of Maharashtra FDA, CB Pawar said that all the seven divisions of FDA in the State have been asked to collect samples. If the chemical presence is found, which is injurious to human health then the criminal action would be taken against the concerned persons. The law has provisions for such an action. If non-chemical contaminants are found then fine could be levied, he said.

The potato has been added to the High-Risk list of the Non-GMO Project Standard because a GMO potato variety is now “widely commercially available” in the United States. To determine when a crop needs to be moved from the Monitored-Risk list to the High-Risk list, the Project uses an established set of criteria related to the likelihood of GMO contamination in the conventional and non-GMO supply chain. As a result of this move, products made with potato will now be subject to extra scrutiny before they can become Non-GMO Project Verified.

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“Browning is nature’s most visible way of letting you know a product is rotting. GMOs that use RNAi to mask the signs of bruising could lead consumers to unknowingly ingest an unhealthy, toxic product,” says Megan Westgate, executive director of the Non-GMO Project.

The Non-GMO Project also announced that a new variety of soy, produced with a type of gene editing called TALEN, has been added to its High-Risk list. Developments in biotechnology are happening so fast that the Non-GMO Project now has two full-time research staff dedicated to monitoring.

“The supply chain risks we’re now seeing from new GMOs are unprecedented in the decade we’ve been verifying products,” according to Westgate. “Not only are new GE techniques being used, but in some cases biotechnology companies are using unscientific arguments to deceive the public into thinking their products are non-GMO.”

Seneff: “The documentary Sprayed is now available for free if you have Amazon Prime. It's a very gripping story blending segments from Vietnam, Miami Beach and NE Brazil, the center of the Zika virus/ microcephaly epidemic. Well done!”

Sprayed

As Miami residents worry about being sprayed with toxic chemicals in the War on Zika, a journey to Brazil and Vietnam reveals unexpected insights. Sprayed documents the rise of microcephaly attributed to the Zika virus and the generational impact of Agent Orange, exploring a possible link between birth defects and disease control. Perspectives of doctors, scientists and victims are heard.

Seneff: “Eating organic can significantly reduce your risk to cancer - new study in France confirms. I bet in the US the difference would be even greater.”

Can Eating Organic Food Lower Your Cancer Risk?

The magnitude of protection surprised the study authors. “We did expect to find a reduction, but the extent of the reduction is quite important,” said Julia Baudry, the study’s lead author and a researcher with the Center of Research in Epidemiology and Statistics Sorbonne Paris Cité of the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research. She noted the study does not prove an organic diet causes a reduction in cancers, but strongly suggests “that an organic-based diet could contribute to reducing cancer risk."

After her best selling film and book, The World according to Monsanto, award-winning journalist Marie-Monique Robin presents her newest documentary, Roundup Facing Its Judges, covering the devastating impact of glyphosate-based herbicides used around the world. Roundup Facing Its Judges brings us the voices of the workers, farmers, and communities at the forefront of glyphosate exposure to demonstrate the scale of one of the greatest environmental and health scandals in modern history. Filmed throughout the International Monsanto Tribunal held in The Hague, you will also hear from scientists, lawyers, and doctors who reveal evidence of glyphosate’s dangers while also exposing the consequences of agribusiness’ power over our global food system.

This film clearly illustrates the irrevocable harm of Monsanto’s reckless pursuit for profits. If you are a farmer, worker, or consumer concerned with corporate agriculture’s human and environmental injustices, you will want to watch this documentary.

Seneff: “A new study out of UC Davis is urging legislative action to ban all members of a class of insecticide called organophosphates, of which chlorpyrifos is a notorious member. There are concerns that these chemicals are causing a loss of IQ in children, among other things. These chemicals started being used when DDT was banned -- as a replacement for DDT. When will they learn that we can't use chemicals in agriculture, period? !!!!!”

"We found no evidence of a safe level of organophosphate pesticide exposure for children. Well before birth, organophosphate pesticides are disrupting the brain in its earliest stages, putting them on track for difficulties in learning, memory and attention, effects which may not appear until they reach school-age. Government officials around the world need to listen to science, not chemical lobbyists," study author and Simon Fraser University scientist Bruce Lanphear told The Guardian.

...Picture this: In the 1980s, hand flapping, non-verbal, connection-avoiding childrenwere not recognized. (Perhaps because far fewer existed?) Today, eyesight has so improved in professionals that they can actually see the signs. Make sense?”

Trump's EPA sides with Monsanto, extends dicamba&#8203; two more years

"The Trump EPA's reckless re-approval of this dangerous poison ignores the facts on the ground and damage across millions of acres," CBD senior scientist Nathan Donley said. "Simply adding more use restrictions to an uncontrollable pesticide that already comes with 39 pages of instructions and limitations reflects a broken process. Pesticide regulation has been hijacked by pesticide makers."

Dr Caius Rommens was a former team leader at Monsanto and creator of GMO potatoes for J.R. Simplot Company. He's authored a new book called "Pandora's Potatoes: The Worst GMOs".

Dr Rommens writes: I have now summarized the new conclusions of this past work (without disclosing company secrets—I am bound by confidentiality agreements) in a book, entitled ‘Pandora’s Potatoes.’ This book, which is now available at Amazon, explains why I renounce my work at Simplot and why the GMO varieties should be withdrawn from the market. It is a warning and a call for action: a hope that others will step forward with additional evidence, so that the public, with its limited financial means, has a chance to counter the narrow-mindedness of the biotech industry. On May 3rd 2018 the columnist Michael Gerson wrote in the Washington Post: “Anti-GMO is anti-science.” His statement was echoed by Mitch Daniels, his colleague, who added, “[It] isn’t just anti-science. It’s immoral.” But these two columnists are not scientists. They don’t understand the level of bias and self-deception that exists among genetic engineers. Indeed, anyone who is pro-science should understand that science is meant to study nature, not to modify it—and certainly not to predict, in the face of strong evidence, the absence of unintended effects. The real anti-science movement is not on the streets. It is, as I discovered, in the laboratories of corporate America.

'The world is against them': new era of cancer lawsuits threaten Monsanto

“Monsanto needs to realize that we are not going to be silent any more,” said Barton, a third-generation farmer, who is part of a California lawsuit filed by the Baum Hedlund firm, which represented Johnson. “We are not going to roll over and play dead … People should be warned that this stuff is everywhere and we should be careful of this product.”

Barton, 69, said he also feared that his three sons could get sick due to their Roundup exposure.

“My dad exposed me to this. He never would’ve done that if he knew it was dangerous,” he added. “I have this guilt that I may have endangered my own sons.”

Kellogg Co shares plunged the most intraday since 2000 after the company cut its profit forecast and reported a decline in U.S. breakfast foods -- underscoring the difficult road that packaged food companies are facing as consumer tastes change. Instead of doing want consumers want, which is to remove GMOs and toxic pesticides from their products, Kellogg's is doing things like adding probiotics to their toxic cereals to trick people into thinking their products are healthy. As consumer demands for clean food increases, Kellogg's is the one Big Food corporation that's doing the very least to truly improve their products. That's why we've called for a consumer boycott of all their products and brands since 2012. And it's working. Kellogg's net sales have been down ever since. Keep it up - Boycott Kellogg's!

Did you know that in the UK and other countries, Kellogg’s cereals have no gmo ingredients?

Petition

Kellogg's: Remove GMOs & Glyphosate and Get Non-GMO Project Verified

Because GMOs are so prevalent in our food supply and it is difficult to rally the nation to boycott all GMO foods, we chose to strategically target Kellogg’s for our first boycott campaign. As it has happened in other countries, when one Big Food company is forced to remove GMOs, their competitors are at a disadvantage and soon follow.

Not long after the campaign began, the company’s sales began to decline and continue to do so. We chose Kellogg’s as our first boycott for many reasons:

Kellogg’s has been an American icon since 1906.

Kellogg’s heavily markets to children and presents itself with a wholesome family image…

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After signing the petition and sending a letter, call Kellogg’s customer service and ask them to remove GMOs & glyphosate from all their products and brands, and get Non-GMO Project Verified: 800-962-1413

Seneff: “Vegans may be concerned about the gelatin because it's an animal-based product, but I'd be more concerned because it is likely contaminated with glyphosate, since the pigs and cows are fed heavy doses in their GMO feed and gelatin is high in glycine. Glyphosate is a glycine mimetic that I believe gets incorporated into proteins by mistake in place of glycine. Gelatin is derived from collagen which has extremely high glycine content. Glyphosate has been found as a contaminant in multiple vaccines, particularly those where the live virus is grown on gelatin, such as MMR. Zen Honeycutt of Moms Across America and Anthony Samsel, an independent scientist, both detected glyphosate in vaccines.”

The Environment Ministry has announced a spate of new regulations on the use of herbicides and pesticides. The tougher policy aims for a staged exit from the use of weed killer glyphosate and similar products

Use of glyphosate and similar herbicides in Germany will face tougher restrictions going forward, the Environment Ministry announced on Tuesday.

While carbon emissions and global warming disrupt food production through extreme weather such as drought and floods, these findings warn of a direct yet mostly invisible impact on people's diets, said Matthew Smith, an author of the study. "It's more hidden ... most people wouldn't necessarily notice if they lost 5 percent of iron or zinc from their wheat, but it could have broad ranging health effects," said the research associate at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health.

The main theory behind the link is that carbon dioxide makes plants grow faster and create fewer micro-nutrients, he added.

In some cases, research is designed to be actively deceptive. Coca-Cola was recently caught funding academics to publish studies that shifted the debate on obesity away from the consumption of sodas to lack of exercise. A study of media reports generated by these studies found that journalists helped to keep this money hidden in at least 30 news articles that failed to mention the scientists’ financial ties to Coca-Cola.

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I relied heavily on the work of AP reporter Candice Choi and Anahad O’Connor at the New York Times, who filed open records requests. The emails they collected showed how food companies and trade associations actually exert influence. Otherwise we would never know how they try to influence reporters by giving them information, inviting them to sponsored meetings, and cozying up to them in other ways. I also relied on the work of other reporters who expose corporate influence on research and practice.

When Hitler did it, we called him a monster. When it's done here, we call it, "Business as usual."

The very governmental agencies created to protect us are now in the pockets of PROFIT. Just look at how they’ve evolved to serve corporate interests. It’s all out there to be seen. I spent a few months exploring available information. Yes—it takes time out of life, but would you rather spend the time now—or see your life cut short in the end? Either way, the time is spent. People keep telling me they don’t have time. As they walk away, my calm demeanor silently screams, “You’re right—you don’t have time.” Time is a luxury we now HAVE to afford. We’ve been groomed into acceptance—much like a pedophile grooms a child.

Our food is toxic. We are being fed our demise. Just look at the climb in diseases we are being fed in the paper below:

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Picture this: In the 1980s, hand flapping, non-verbal, connection-avoiding children were not recognized. (Perhaps because far fewer existed?) Today, eye sight has so improved in professionals that they can actually see the signs. Make sense?

In the new book, "Pandora's Potatoes: The Worst GMOs", Dr Caius Rommens warns about the GMO potatoes he created for J.R. Simplot Company in Boise, Idaho - the same potato that we've warned our supporters about.

Dr Rommens writes, "I identified some minor mistakes and had my first doubts about the products of my work. I wanted to re-evaluate our program and slow it down, but it was too little too late. Business leaders were involved now. They saw dollar signs. They wanted to expand and speed-up the program, not slow it down. I decided to quit in 2013... The true scope of my errors became obvious to me only after I had relocated to a small farm in the mountains of the Pacific Northwest. By this time Simplot had announced the regulatory approval of my GMO varieties. As the company began to plan for quiet introductions in American and Asian markets, I was breeding plants and animals independently, using conventional methods. And since I still felt uncomfortable about my corporate past, I also re-evaluated the about two hundred patents and articles that I had published in the past, as well as the various petitions for deregulation. Not so much biased anymore, I easily identified major mistakes."

The GMO Potato was upgraded to the High-Risk list of the Non-GMO Project because a GMO potato variety is now “widely commercially available” in the United States. RNAi, the genetic engineering technique used to create the potato, results in a potato that hides the symptoms of black spot bruising which could lead consumers to unknowingly ingest an unhealthy, toxic product. Currently, GMO potatoes are being marketed under the Simplot Innate brand, found under the trademark White Russet. Here's a photo of the package to help you spot GMO potatoes. https://www.facebook.com/GMOFreeUSA/photos/a.468695639837571/2504114472962334/?type=3&theater

Look for the wording…

”stay fresher looking longer” and “...our farmers use tried and true agricultural techniques to grow a better potato from seeds that contain the strongest traits…” and “...less vulnerable to bruising and black spots and will stay white longer when cut or peeled…”

C.G. Dutra: “Glyphosate is NOT safe for human consumption, no herbicide is safe for human or animal consumption. All herbicides have a job to do and that job is to 'Kill Life'.”

AND

“Read what is said in this post about the 'Shikimate Pathway'. We have that pathway in our gut bacteria and Glyphosate uses that pathway to kill organisms. This is 'full acknowledgement' of what Glyphosate does to our guts that makes us ill. This is HOW Glyphosate kills off our gut bacteria, which is our immune systems.”

Summary: Antibiotics strong enough to kill off gut bacteria can also stop the growth of new brain cells in the hippocampus, a section of the brain associated with memory, reports a new study in mice. Researchers also uncovered a clue to why -- a type of white blood cell seems to act as a communicator between the brain, the immune system, and the gut.

'Troubling allegations' prompt Health Canada review of studies used to approve popular weed-killer

Health Canada says in light of "troubling allegations," its scientists are reviewing hundreds of studies used during the approval process for glyphosate, the active ingredient in Canada's most popular herbicide, Roundup.

The decision comes after a coalition of environmental groups claimed Health Canada relied on studies that were secretly influenced by agrochemical giant Monsanto, the maker of Roundup, when it re-approved use of glyphosate in 2015 and confirmed that decision in 2017.

The coalition, which includes Equiterre, Ecojustice, Canadian Physicians for the Environment and others, says academic papers looking at whether the herbicide causes cancer were presented to Health Canada's Pest Management Regulatory Agency as independent, when in fact Monsanto had a hand in writing them.

New Study Finds Harmful Agricultural Pesticides in Rural New York State Homes

“We found that pesticide residues are ubiquitous in rural homes in New York state,” said Laquatra, professor of design and environmental analysis, who noted that positive results for such chemicals were found in every house tested.

If approved, it would be the first GE forest tree legalized in the US. It would also be the first GMO approved for release in the wild with the intention of spreading pollen to contaminate wild relatives with the engineered trait. If approved, the unregulated GE American chestnut would eventually replace the wild American chestnut, which would no longer exist in the forests.

After the ESF petition is accepted by the USDA it will be opened up for public comment – anticipated to be anytime in the next few months.

Specifically, the purveyors of factory farm turkeys hope you haven’t heard about the latest turkey salmonella outbreak in 35 states, causing 63 hospitalizations and at least one death.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention:

The outbreak strain of Salmonella Reading has been identified in various raw turkey products, including ground turkey and turkey patties. The outbreak strain has also been found in raw turkey pet food and live turkeys, indicating it might be widespread in the turkey industry."

They hope you’ve forgotten that scientists at the Bloomberg School’s Center for a Livable Future and Arizona State’s Biodesign Institute found Tylenol, Benadryl, caffeine, statins and Prozac in feather meal samples that included U.S. turkeys—“a surprisingly broad spectrum of prescription and over-the-counter drugs,” said study co-author Rolf Halden of Arizona State University.

And finally, Butterball hopes you’ve forgotten that several of its employees were convicted of sickening animal cruelty and that veterinarian Dr. Sarah Mason admits tipping off Butterball about an imminent raid by Hoke County detectives to investigate the abuse.

Can consumers rely on labels to make good buying decisions? Not really…

Now there's a new kid on the block: so-called gene editing, which includes the CRISPR-Cas method. Instead of trying to work out why the first generation of genetic engineering tools hasn't delivered or worked, so that maybe there could be lessons to be learned for the next generation, they are now coming up with the same promises – but even bigger, if that is possible.

There is no critical debate or analysis – least of all of the scientific reasons why GM didn't deliver the first time.

In 2014, on the topic of CRISPR-Cas, a Newsweek article stated, "GMO scientists could save the world from hunger, if we let them". Really? Saving the world with point mutations? Again? Have we not learned from the last 20 years, when we tried that and it didn't work?

At its meeting on the 2nd October 2018, the Executive Council: GMO Act, refused to authorize the GM maize for commercial growing as it found that the data provided by Monsanto was insufficient to demonstrate the claimed drought tolerant and insect resistant efficacy of the GM event.

In particular, the EC found that the drought tolerant field trial data presented by Monsanto for trials conducted over a period of 5 years (2014-2018) in Hopetown, Orania, Lutzville and Malelane, were sorely wanting.

The EC found that the drought data provided by Monsanto, specifically the kernel count per row and the kernel count per ear data showed no statistical significant difference between the GM event and conventional maize.

According to the Quaker Oats complaint, the defendants sell, manufacturer and market several products under the Quaker Oats brand and make “several detailed representations about the health attributes of the products on the front of the product packages.”

The suit references recent testing by the Environmental Working Group which revealed that the defendants’ products contain glyphosate..

Seneff: “Rather than defending its food quality, it seems to me that Canada should heed the warnings coming from India and Italy, and fix its food supply. The US is most likely even worse than Canada in terms of glyphosate contamination in the food. But we don't bother to test so the world at large is largely unaware.”

The brain is a protected environment, partially walled off from the contents of the bloodstream by a network of cells that surround its blood vessels. Bacteria and viruses that manage to penetrate this blood-brain barrier can cause life-threatening inflammation. Some research has suggested distant microbes—those living in our gut—might affect mood and behavior and even the risk of neurological disease, but by indirect means. For example, a disruption in the balance of gut microbiomes could increase the production of a rogue protein that may cause Parkinson’s disease if it travels up the nerve connecting the gut to the brain.

The secret ingredients in our food may be a lead driver of our obesity, infertility, cancer, digestive problems, autism, brain fog, skin conditions, gluten sensitivity, allergies, fatigue, anxiety, and many other conditions. Meet more than a dozen people whose turned around serious health conditions after adopting a diet that avoids genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and food sprayed with toxic herbicides like Roundup. Learn from leading physicians who say that these are not coincidences. They see illness and recovery like this every day in their practice. And listen to the scientists who explain why.

Seneff: “Truly brilliant! France is going to use a tax on glyphosate sales to help fund growth in organic agriculture! France's agenda is to totally phase out glyphosate in the next few years. Germany seems to be on board as well!”

French Government Starts Phase-Out of Glyphosate with Online Farmer Platform and Herbicide Tax

The new French Ecology Minister, François Goullet de Rugy, also confirmed that the tax on the use of glyphosate will also be increased to help the phase-out: “To achieve this, the government plans to increase the fee for phytosanitary pollution. This fee will be raised by 50%, one more euro per kilo, for glyphosate. “

“This tax will help finance, with up to 50 million euros per year, the development of organic farming in addition to the 71 million euros devoted to the Ecophyto program for the reduction of use of phytosanitary products”, de Rugy continued.

Now, Monsanto's next date in the judgment seat in California has been set for March 18.

California Superior Court Judge Ioana Petrou granted an early trial Thursday to elderly couple Alva and Alberta Pilliod who claim their use of Roundup from 1975 to 2011 caused their non-Hodgkin lymphoma, Reuters reported.

U.S. judge selects first case in federal Monsanto weed-killer litigation

Hardeman’s case will mark the second trial in the U.S. litigation over glyphosate, after a California state court jury in August awarded $289 million to a school groundskeeper, finding Monsanto liable for the man’s cancer.

Abstract: Authorization of pesticides for market release requires toxicity testing on animals, typically performed by test laboratories on contract with the pesticide producer. The latter provides the results and summary to the regulatory authorities. For the commonly used pesticide chlorpyrifos, an industry-funded toxicity study concludes that no selective effects on neurodevelopment occur even at high exposures. In contrast, the evidence from independent studies points to adverse effects of current exposures on cognitive development in children. We reviewed the industry-funded developmental neurotoxicity test data on chlorpyrifos and the related substance chlorpyrifos-methyl. We noted treatment-related changes in a brain dimension measure for chlorpyrifos at all dose levels tested, although not been reported in the original test summary. We further found issues which inappropriately decrease the ability of the studies to reveal true effects, including a dosage regimen that resulted in too low exposure of the nursing pups for chlorpyrifos and possibly for chlorpyrifos-methyl, and a failure to detect any neurobehavioral effects of lead nitrate used as positive control in the chlorpyrifos study. Our observations thus suggest that conclusions in test reports submitted by the producer may be misleading. This discrepancy affects the ability of regulatory authorities to perform a valid and safe evaluation of these pesticides. The difference between raw data and conclusions in the test reports indicates a potential existence of bias that would require regulatory attention and possible resolution.

"The EPA and Monsanto created a worst-case scenario, Mortensen said, by allowing and encouraging farmers to use an herbicide that kills a wide variety of plants at very low doses: “Dicamba-resistant crops should never have been released, period.” "

The Federal Minister for Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety, Svenja Schulze (SPD) wants to push forward with ending the use of the controversial weedkiller glyphosate. She is therefore putting her fellow cabinet minister, the Federal Minister of Food and Agriculture Julia Klöckner (CDU), under pressure. “We now want to progressively drive the phase-out, including an end date,” said Schulze in Berlin on Tuesday (6 November). She added that glyphosate could not be replaced with similar substances either.

But this viewpoint has been completely overturned by the new science of omnigenics, which teaches us that attempts to engineer complex traits (e.g. higher yield, drought tolerance, or disease resistance) into crops using transgenic and gene editing is destined to fail.

Nearly 500 water utilities across the state tested positive for atrazine — a weed killer — which can lead to harmful health effects, according to a new report. The Environmental Working Group also found that utilities are testing water during times when the herbicide isn’t being used as much — and that they may be lowballing the results.

Senator Elizabeth Warren: “Think it can’t get worse than Scott Pruitt? Andrew Wheeler will do anything to help the polluters he used to lobby for — including allow more toxic pollutants into the air our kids breathe. Now Trump wants him to run the EPA. It’s revolting."

Science and scientists can provide us with more reliable information but they cannot, and should not, impose their values on others from pulpits of scientific authority – behaving like high-priests of the truth.

Science and scientists have been used to justify polluting industries, cigarettes, DDT, and nuclear weapons, to name a few of many. It is right, therefore, for citizens to be critical of science and scientists, and the values they mix with facts when they make pronouncements about the "truth".

Latham: “J.R. Simplot is a potato processing and marketing company, based in Idaho, that has recently launched GMO potatoes with supposedly enhanced disease resistance, enhanced uniformity, and improved healthiness. However, according to Caius Rommens, their former lead potato breeder, the reality is very different. As a crop, the potatoes contain genetically unstable traits, suffer a significant yield drag, are designed to conceal bruises and spread diseases, and are intended to be grown and stored in ways that maximize disease and pest pressures. Additionally, as a processed food, they have lost the sensory attributes that make normal potato-based foods attractive. Even worse, they likely contain dramatically increased toxins that may cause health safety issues. Furthermore, the development of these GMO potatoes involved at least one act of biopiracy. Nevertheless, these GMO potatoes are quietly entering the marketplace with innocuous names such as Innate, White, and Hibernate. All this and more is described in a short new book, "Pandora’s Potatoes”, written by Caius Rommens, the inventor of these potatoes.”

Cornell Alliance for Science is a PR Campaign for the Agrichemical Industry

Despite its academic-sounding name and affiliation with an Ivy League Institution, the Cornell Alliance for Science is a public relations campaign to promote genetically engineered foods and pesticides. With $12 million in funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Cornell Alliance for Science claims to be working to “restore the importance of scientific evidence in decision-making,” however, the examples in this fact sheet show that the group:

Misleads the public with inaccurate information about science;

Elevates unreliable messengers who make false and unscientific claims; and,

Partners with front groups that have worked with the tobacco industry or chemical industries to manufacture doubt about science that raises health concerns.

The evidence suggests the Cornell Alliance for Science is using Cornell’s name, reputation and authority to promote the talking points and political agenda of the world’s largest agrichemical corporations.

The Gates Foundation helped launch the Cornell Alliance for Science in 2014 as an effort to “depolarize the charged debate” around genetically modified foods (GMOs)...

One Planet: The Poison Papers reveal chemical industry secrets in the US

On this edition of Your Call’s One Planet series, we’ll have a conversation with Dr. Jonathan Latham, the director of the Poison Papers, a vast trove of chemical industry and regulatory agency documents and correspondence stretching back to the 1920s.

The papers show that both industry and regulators understood the extraordinary toxicity of many chemical products and worked together to conceal this information from the public and the press.

University of California, Berkeley, biologists found that spraying tomatoes with microbes from healthy tomatoes protected them from disease-causing bacteria, but that fertilizing the tomatoes beforehand negated the protection, leading to an increase in the population of pathogenic microbes on the plants' leaves.

Seneff: “Tony Mitra has a thoughtful new video expressing his suspicions that Bayer may be thinking of swapping out glyphosate for glufosinate as a major herbicide. Glyphosate is an amino acid analogue of glycine, and glufosinate is an amino acid analogue of glutamate. We can expect a whole new set of strange diseases to start showing up if we increase our exposure to glufosinate.”

Bayer Acquisition – Exit glyphosate, enter glufosinate ?

So what is behind this Bayer’s disclosure regarding a possibly selective and partial transparency on glyphosate safety?

Well, some of my scientist friends, such as Thierry Vrain of Canada, suspect that glyphosate has gotten so controversial and indefensible that Bayer may be planning to kill Glyphosate, and replace it with their own glufosinate. Phasing out glyphosate might need dexterity if Bayer wants to avoid being sued into bankrupcy. Is this transparency ploy an attempt to engineer a safe exit for glyphosate and a safe entry for glufosinate?

After all, Bayer’s baby – glufosinate, is the only other broad spectrum herbicide that is also a mimic of yet another canonical amino acid – glutamate, and has similar potential to cause biological havoc by wrongly getting into proteins.

So Stephanie Seneff rightly ponders about a shift to glufosinate that could open up another wave of new diseases due to new kinds of protein disfunction, and bring more misery to the living world.

New 20 minute video on children in Paraguay and damage to their DNA due to agrochemical exposure from the nearby soybean fields.

This 21 minute video describes an experiment that was conducted by researcher Stela Benitez Leite and collaborators comparing children in two different villages in Paraguay. The control group live near an organic sugarcane factory and were minimally exposed to toxic agrochemicals. The comparison group live in a rural area surrounded by soybeans that were frequently sprayed with pesticides. Comet assays and micronucleus examinations were performed on cell samples from both groups. The research results, showing statistically significant increases in DNA damage in cells from the exposed children, has been accepted for publication in the journal, Indian Journal of Medical Research, as a paper titled, "DNA damage induced by exposure to pesticides in children of rural areas in Paraguay."

But this viewpoint has been completely overturned by the new science of omnigenics, which teaches us that attempts to engineer complex traits (e.g. higher yield, drought tolerance, or disease resistance) into crops using transgenic and gene editing is destined to fail.

The secret ingredients in our food may be a lead driver of our obesity, infertility, cancer, digestive problems, autism, brain fog, skin conditions, gluten sensitivity, allergies, fatigue, anxiety, and many other conditions. Meet more than a dozen people whose turned around serious health conditions after adopting a diet that avoids genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and food sprayed with toxic herbicides like Roundup. Learn from leading physicians who say that these are not coincidences. They see illness and recovery like this every day in their practice. And listen to the scientists who explain why.

GMO Free USA: “Breaking News: Bayer Announces 12,000 Jobs Cut. The pharmaceutical/GMO/agrichemical giant has a problem that can be summed up in one word. Monsanto. Bayer acquired Monsanto and inherited over 9,300 Roundup-cancer lawsuits, losing the first trial in August. It also inherited lawsuits by over 180 farmers who have been damaged by Monsanto's dicamba herbicide. Dicamba has damaged millions of acres of crops and private property across the nation since the new dicamba-tolerant seeds were launched in 2016. Since the Bayer-Monsanto merger, share prices have plunged over 30%. And now, the corporation is cutting 12,000 jobs. What do we have to say about this? GOOD. This immoral corporation that's poisoning people and the Earth needs to go bankrupt. The sooner, the better.”

Bayer to sell businesses, cut jobs after Monsanto deal

FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Bayer (BAYGn.DE), the German drugmaker that bought U.S. seed company Monsanto, announced on Thursday the sale of a number of businesses, around 12,000 job cuts and 3.3 billion euros ($3.8 billion) in impairments.

Chief Executive Werner Baumann is under pressure to boost Bayer’s share price after a drop of more than 35 percent so far this year, dragged down by concern over more than 9,000 lawsuits it faces over an alleged cancer-causing effect of Monsanto’s Roundup weed killer.

…

Under a cost cutting program that will also target synergies expected from the $63 billion acquisition of Monsanto, Bayer will cut around 12,000 of its 118,200 jobs worldwide.

The EPA is so confident that traces of pesticides in food are safe that the agency has granted multiple chemical company requests for increases in the allowed tolerances, effectively providing a legal basis for higher levels of pesticide residues to be allowed in American food.

But recent scientific studies have prompted many scientists to warn that years of promises of safety may be wrong. While no one is expected to drop dead from eating a bowl of cereal containing pesticide residues, repeated low level exposures to trace amounts of pesticides in the diet could be contributing to a range of health problems, particularly for children, scientists say.

“There are probably many other health effects; we just haven’t studied them”

Unauthorised access to trial sites indicates collusion between biotech lobbyists and GM researchers paid by the Gates Foundation and others. Mark Lynas’s unethical social media hype uses Tanzania’s smallholder farmers in an instrumentalist way as a means to justify the introduction of GMO crops in the country, claiming that Tanzanians are poor and hungry. The statements of the pro-GM scientists have not yet been corroborated by the Ministry of Agriculture or related institutions such as the Tanzania Official Seed Certification Institute (TOSCI).

Before I got sick life was pretty good. I had a good job. We were renting this nice house; we found it through some friends. It was almost in foreclosure so we were able to rent it for a good price. Three bedrooms and a nice big backyard. I didn’t have a car so my wife Araceli would drop me off at work or I would ride my bike to the bus stop and take the bus to work. My job title at the school district was integrated pest manager, IPM. I did everything – caught skunks, mice, and raccoons, patched holes in walls, worked on irrigation issues. And I sprayed the pesticides, the “juice.” I had to be at work by sun up to make sure we had time to spray before the kids got to school. One of the guys I worked with didn’t want to wear protective gear but I told him he had to. You got to be careful with this stuff. On a typical day I would fill up my little container with raw pesticide liquid and then put that in the back of my truck and then mix a load before I would leave the yard. I’d mix it all in a tank and take that on the back of my truck and then head out to start spraying. I did not like using the chemicals but I loved that job. I would have been making $80,000 a year now if I was still there.

This information comes from a meta-analysis published in Interdisciplinary Toxicology in 2013. In their conclusion, researchers wrote, “glyphosate, the active ingredient in the herbicide, Roundup®, is the most important causal factor in this epidemic.” However, that study was largely buried.

While there have been reports of human embryo editing experiments in laboratory petri dishes, until now, so far as we know, none of these embryos have been implanted in humans. Here the hazards become markedly amplified because the editing intervenes in so-called germ line cells that are transmitted from one generation to another. Conceivably every cell in the body, some 37 trillion, could be programmed with the edits.

The companies call on the EU Commission to ensure the protection of the European internal market against products manufactured outside Europe using new genetic engineering methods. It must ensure that detection methods are available for products manufactured using the processes of new genetic engineering. It has to guarantee labelling, traceability and effective controls for the import of agricultural goods from the countries where plants produced with new genetic engineering methods are cultivated. In addition, a global transparency register is proposed which would cover all genetically modified organisms (GMOs) worldwide, both old and new.

Alarms will sound still louder since Global Advisory Board members announced by Porciello include former Cornell University Dean Ronnie Coffman, who is Cornell’s Director of International Programs in the College of Agriculture and Life Science. As such, Coffman is Porciello’s boss at Cornell. Coffman, more than anyone else, is also agribusiness’s man at Cornell, as witnessed by his secretaryship of the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications, an agribusiness lobby group for GMOs based at the university.

In his role as Director of International Programs, Coffman is also the boss of Sarah Evanega (formerly Davidson) who is director of the Cornell Alliance for Science, also funded by the Gates Foundation. Despite its name, the Cornell Alliance for Science has become notorious for its near-exclusive focus on promoting GMOs for global agriculture, especially in Africa.

…

The endgame for Ceres2030, according to Porciello’s Cornell presentation, is to publish “7 to 11” highly visible academic reviews in Nature magazine in early 2020 designed to showcase and promote science specifically chosen by Ceres2030, the Gates Foundation, and behind them, it is harder than ever to doubt, agribusiness.

Two researchers from the scientific team of the European Diverfarming project at the University of Wageningen (Netherlands), Violette Geissen and Coen J. Ritsema, have analysed surface soil samples from 11 European countries, searching for traces of the pesticides used in the area of agriculture and they have confirmed the persistence of this type of product in the land.

How the biggest farming practice you’ve never heard of is changing your food.

It is harvest season, and the high-clearance sprayer is on its way to desiccate a field. Desiccation may be the most widespread farming practice you’ve never heard of. Farmers desiccate by applying herbicide to their crops; this kills all the plants at the same time, making them uniformly dry and easier to cut. In essence, desiccation speeds up plant aging. Before desiccation, crops would have to dry out naturally at the end of the season. Today, there are examples of desiccation being applied to every type of conventional crop in Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom.1 Chances are that most of what you ate today was harvested using a desiccant, but you’d never know.

The secret ingredients in our food may be a lead driver of our obesity, infertility, cancer, digestive problems, autism, brain fog, skin conditions, gluten sensitivity, allergies, fatigue, anxiety, and many other conditions. Meet more than a dozen people whose turned around serious health conditions after adopting a diet that avoids genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and food sprayed with toxic herbicides like Roundup. Learn from leading physicians who say that these are not coincidences. They see illness and recovery like this every day in their practice. And listen to the scientists who explain why.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Agribusiness giant Monsanto on Tuesday appealed a $78 million verdict in favor of a dying California man who said the company's widely used Roundup weed killer was a major factor in his cancer.

A team of French government scientists analyzed 68,946 citizens in the NutriNet-Santé cohort. Individuals were surveyed to determine if those who ate more organic foods had lower cancer rates. Their new journal article, published online by JAMA Internal Medicine this week (that’s the prestigious journal put out by the American Medical Association), reports their key findings: people consuming organic food most regularly had 25% lower overall cancer risk compared to the group of people reporting very little or no consumption of organic food.

The differences were substantial and highly statistically significant – “participants with the highest frequency of organic food consumption had a 25% lower risk of being diagnosed as having cancer during follow-up compared with those with the lowest frequency” (Hemler et al., 2018). Significant differences in cancer rates were found for Non-Hodgkin lymphoma (as much as a 86% reduction!) and postmenopausal breast cancer, even after accounting for factors like socioeconomic status and exercise habits (Baudry et al., 2018).

Abstract: Roundup formulations are herbicides whose active principle is glyphosate. However, these formulations are potentially more toxic to non-target organisms than pure glyphosate. This study aimed to evaluate and compare the toxic potential of the Roundup formulations through histological alterations in fish. Thus, males and females of the neotropical fish species Jenynsia multidentata (Jenyns, 1842) were exposed for 24 or 96&#8239;h to the Roundup Original® (RO), Roundup Transorb® (RT) or Roundup WG® (RWG) formulations, at a fixed concentration of 0.5&#8239;mg/L of glyphosate. This concentration is close to the maximum glyphosate limits found in the environment and is non-lethal to J. multidentata. The three formulations caused histological damage to the liver, gills and brain of J. multidentata, which increased over the exposure time. Differences in the histological alterations between females and males were observed in the liver and brain. Females were more tolerant to RO and RT than RWG. Males did not exhibit these differences in sensitiveness with formulations. The RWG caused more damage in the liver and gills and RT in the brain. Overall, there were differences in the toxicity of RO, RT and RWG and the toxic effect was presented through histological damage, reinforcing the usefulness of histological biomarkers for Roundup® toxicity. The comparison of the toxic potential of glyphosate-based herbicides is important because it could give support to the governmental organizations to set protective rules for the water ecosystems and human health, as well as to reduce the use of highly toxic formulations in agriculture.

Please sign the letter to our representatives, Read, Gillibrand and Schumer, at the link below.

Monsanto Protection Act Part II? Provision Written by Monsanto-Sponsored Congressman Could Revoke Citizens’ Right to Ban Cancerous Pesticides

With a push from Conaway, Monsanto and Bayer just might get their way again in 2018, as the latest U.S. Farm Bill, which should be passed before the end of the year, includes language that would prevent local governments from restricting pesticide use on private property, such as schools, parks and other similar places.

“We fear that in the worst case, it could wipe away all of these city and county ordinances across the country,” said Environmental Working Group legislative director Colin O’Neil, who’s been tracking the bill and working with officials at local municipalities according to a report in the OC Register.

Considering that we are just now waking up to the dangerous risks of what these pesticides can do to our health, it goes without saying that the timing of this these provisions couldn’t be better for Monsanto and Bayer, the latter of which spent over $14,910,000 lobbying Congress in 2017 alone.

Because Monsanto was able to use state preemption to block local pesticide bans, only 7 states still let local governments regulate pesticides, the article continued.

In response, the OCA’s own lobbying arm, Citizens Regeneration Lobby, launched a drive to stop Monsanto’s “toxic tricks” and to protect the rights of local governments to ban toxic pesticides, especially if enough evidence is found demonstrating their dangers.

To learn more or to submit an email comment to your state’s members of the Senate, you can click on this link. The key part of the bill to mention is Section 9101, which contains the proposed block on local pesticide bans.

Now they have published that information. The released documents show Folta disclosed to UF as far back as May 2017 that he was serving as “a consultant” – his term – in a legal dispute involving Bayer. The $600-an-hour work was commissioned by a law firm, Clifford Chance, acting for Bayer.

This confirms exactly what we published back in May: that Folta was “earning $600/hr for work involving the agrichemical giant Bayer”, and that “it involved legal issues”.

Oxitec, the company that developed the genetically modified mosquito, has withdrawn its application with the Environmental Protection Agency to try the technology in the Florida Keys and Harris County, Texas.

‘This important decision puts controls on gene drives using simple common sense principles: Don’t mess with someone else’s environment, territories and rights without their consent,’ explains Jim Thomas, Co-Executive Director of the ETC Group. ‘Gene drives are currently being pursued by powerful military and agribusiness interests and a few wealthy individuals. This UN decision puts the power back in the hands of local communities, in particular Indigenous Peoples, to step on the brakes on this exterminator technology’.

The Convention on Biological Diversity decision (see Box) also requires that, before an environmental gene drive release, a thorough risk assessment is carried out. With most countries lacking a regulatory system for the technology, it requires that new safety measures are put in place to prevent potential adverse effects. The decision acknowledges that more studies and research on impacts of gene drives are needed to develop guidelines to assess gene drive organisms before they are considered for release[2].

‘In Africa we are all potentially affected, and we do not want to be lab rats for this exterminator technology,’ notes Mariann Bassey-Orovwuje of Friends of the Earth Africa, and chair of the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa. ‘Farmers have already marched in the streets of Burkina Faso to protest genetically engineered mosquitoes and we will march again if they ignore this UN decision. We are giving notice now that potentially affected West African communities have not given their consent or approval to this risky technology’.

Potatoes Have Landed on the Non-GMO Project’s High-Risk List – What This Means and What You Need To Know

Will GMO potatoes contaminate organic potatoes in the same way that GMO corn can contaminate organic corn?

“Because of the way that potatoes are propagated, or the way that they reproduce, it is not the same thing as corn. The concerns we have about GMO potato contamination have much more to do with co-mingling in the processing facility. GMO potatoes being mixed in with non-GMO potatoes at a manufacturing plant is a far bigger worry for us,” said Megan Westgate, Executive Director of the Non-GMO Project.

So, as of now, the main risk of GMO potatoes contaminating organic potatoes is about how the potatoes are handled at a processing facility rather than what happens in nature out on the farms.

The secret ingredients in our food may be a lead driver of our obesity, infertility, cancer, digestive problems, autism, brain fog, skin conditions, gluten sensitivity, allergies, fatigue, anxiety, and many other conditions. Meet more than a dozen people whose turned around serious health conditions after adopting a diet that avoids genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and food sprayed with toxic herbicides like Roundup. Learn from leading physicians who say that these are not coincidences. They see illness and recovery like this every day in their practice. And listen to the scientists who explain why.

Seneff: “There is a new paper out, and it is both awe inspiring and terrifying.

I believe it nearly proves that glyphosate substitutes for glycine during protein synthesis.

The authors used CRISPR technology to redesign the EPSP synthase protein in various plants, and showed that they could copy mutations that had occurred naturally in glyphosate-resistant weeds to effect protection from glyphosate. Since CRISPR is officially not considered a GMO technology, it should be much easier to get past the regulatory process. This means, in practice that they will be able to come up with glyphosate resistant versions of practically every food crop. In the future, we can expect high levels of glyphosate in basically ALL of our food.

But what is even more interesting to me is that they discovered that the best way to create a version of the protein that is glyphosate resistant is to change the DNA code so that the highly conserved glycine residue at location 96 (in E. coli) is swapped out for alanine. This introduces an extra methyl group, which crowds PEP at the binding site. So it's best to also modify another amino acid nearby to provide more room for PEP. You can end up with a version of the protein that has essentially the same activity towards PEP as the wild type, but which is absolutely resistant to glyphosate even at very high concentrations. They don't seem to be disturbed by the fact that the new protein has plenty of room for glyphosate at the PEP binding site yet it is not sensitive to glyphosate.

The explanation of course is that glyphosate is substituting for the glycine residue at location 96 (in E. coli). The extra methylphosphonyl group bulging out into the cavity disrupts PEP binding.”

A: Seneff: “I noticed that too. Ominous! Interesting that these two merged in 2017. I can see dollar signs in their eyes thinking of all those patentable non-GMO seeds they're going to be able to engineer to allow glyphosate to be used indiscriminately on just about any crop!”

“We can mass pollute the soil and call it legal and call it green and call it recycling. So now we have government legalized pollution.” Mike Adams

“No one will know it until people start dropping dead.”

Biosludged - Full Documentary

EPA exposed as criminal pollution enterprise engaged in bioterrorism, food contamination and the destruction of ecosystems across North America.

Biosludged uncovers the astonishing science fraud being carried out by the EPA to legalize the mass pollution of America's farm lands, school playgrounds and city parks with heavily contaminated industrial waste and human sewage.

RFK, Jr.: “Councilman Tom Hucker says even though there is still debate about the safety of Roundup in the scientific community, there is enough evidence to make it a clear choice: "We’re talking about whether you’d rather have weeds or you’d rather have cancer."”

Many people are looking for a simple answer or new insight into the issue, but the answer has always been the same. We need to petition our legislators, exercise our right to vote, rally our communities, lobby for what we believe in, and most importantly, understand that it’s the health and welfare of our families that is at stake.

Seneff: “Food allergies are an epidemic today, especially in the industrialized world where they eat a lot of glyphosate-contaminated processed foods. I would predict glyphosate as a contaminant in dairy, gluten, peanuts, soy, eggs, farmed fish, and even meats like chicken, beef and pork. I believe that glyphosate incorporating into the proteins in place of glycine is a key driver behind the epidemic.”

Confined dining: A primer on factory farms and what they mean for your meat

In regulatory lingo, these meat factories are called “concentrated animal feeding operations,” or CAFOs. (Pronounced “cay-fo.”) Here’s everything you ever wanted to know about them — and a few things you’d probably rather not know.

Definition of Pesticides on the website of Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Govt. Of India.

“Pesticide is a chemical or biological agent (such as a virus, bacterium, antimicrobial, or disinfectant) that deters, incapacitates, kills, or otherwise discourages pests. Pesticides may cause acute and delayed health effects in people who are exposed. Such adverse health effects range from simple irritation of the skin and eyes to more severe effects like affecting the nervous system, mimicking hormones causing reproductive problems, and causing cancer.”

Lee then talks about the weedkiller company Monsanto which also worked hard to cover up their products’ cancer-causing side effects. “By now you’re seeing a trend,” Lee said. “It seems like Monsanto has known for years that Roundup causes cancer. And yet they did everything they could to cover up the studies.

“Big tobacco, big oil, big ag, big telecom; they will perpetrate any level of harm, of death and destruction...if it just means more profit.”

Acts of corporate evil are just the tip of the iceberg on this week’s Redacted Tonight. Watch below and find out more about war crimes at the Mexican border, mercenary war in Yemen, Walmart’s war on small-town America, and medical devices spying on hapless patients:

The medical community is unambiguous: Théo’s malformations are not genetic, but definitely linked to an external factor. “Right from birth, Théo’s doctors pointed a finger at pesticides,” says Sabine, who at the time didn’t make an immediate connection to the weed killer that she used at home to spray the horse paddock. “The wake-up call came later,” she remembers. In August 2008, to be precise. Just as she did every year at the same time, Sabine treated the area with Glyper, a herbicide containing glyphosate. “It suddenly hit me; I remembered what the surgeon had told me about pesticides.” Due to the teratogenic risks of glyphosate [causing malformation of embryos and foetal abnormalities] cited in scientific studies, doctors say the link to Théo’s birth defects is “highly likely”. “I was exposed [to glyphosate] at a crucial moment in my pregnancy – during the first four weeks,” she says. “I didn’t even know I was pregnant, so I didn’t take any particular precautions.”

Even worse, Sabine knowingly chose the product. At the time, this environmentally minded mother-to-be fell for agrochemical giant Monsanto’s ad campaign promoting the merits of its product Roundup, the “first biodegradable weed killer”. Meanwhile, in 2001, the American corporation had already been sued in France for false or misleading advertising. The company, ordered to pay a €15,000 fine, appealed. The Court of Cassation [France’s supreme court of appeal] upheld the penalty two years later. “During all that time, the ad continued to be aired,” says Théo’s mother, who heard about the court case “too late”.

The Insect Apocalypse Is Here - What does it mean for the rest of life on Earth?

For a moment, Riis was transported to his childhood on the Danish island of Lolland, in the Baltic Sea. Back then, summer bike rides meant closing his mouth to cruise through thick clouds of insects, but inevitably he swallowed some anyway. When his parents took him driving, he remembered, the car’s windshield was frequently so smeared with insect carcasses that you almost couldn’t see through it. But all that seemed distant now. He couldn’t recall the last time he needed to wash bugs from his windshield; he even wondered, vaguely, whether car manufacturers had invented some fancy new coating to keep off insects. But this absence, he now realized with some alarm, seemed to be all around him. Where had all those insects gone? And when? And why hadn’t he noticed?

China doesn’t want poisoned food but is still willing to manufacture Glyphosate to poison you and your family.

China set to shock markets with low glyphosate residue limits in food imports

The Chinese introduction of low MRLs, which are officially based on health concerns following the classification of glyphosate as a probable human carcinogen in 2015 by the International Agency for Research on Cancer, has been expected by both U.S. and Australian farming organizations for some time.

…

It is expected that China will now import more grains from Russia, where glyphosate is not widely used as a desiccant. This also enables China to use glyphosate as a political tool in the current U.S. / China trade war, as food and raw material imports from the U.S., which often contain high levels of the weedkiller, will be put under major pressure.

…

China is a major glyphosate exporter in the world. Over 80% of China-made glyphosate is exported to account for over 60% of the global supply. The output of glyphosate in China increased from 316,000 tons in 2010 to about 505,000 tons in 2017.

It is for this reason that China is walking the glyphosate tightrope rather than calling for a phase-out like France or an outright ban.

With its decision, the EPO has followed the demand of industry to invalidate the new rule. This means that further patents on plants and animals derived from traditional breeding can be granted in future, despite many such patent applications being rejected within the last few months and one just recently being revoked.

The agreement to seek and obtain consent may immediately impact the most high-profile (and well-funded) gene drive project, by researchers at London’s Imperial College, who aim to release genetically engineered mosquitoes in Burkina Faso as a step towards future gene drive mosquito releases. Contrary to Target Malaria’s claims, people living in the villages targeted for potential release have not been consulted or given consent.

This decision follows a campaign by hundreds of organizations, along with concerns expressed by several governments represented at the UN, who called for a moratorium on the environmental release of gene drives.[3]

Monsanto’s new herbicide was supposed to save U.S. farmers from financial ruin. Instead, it upended the agriculture industry, pitting neighbor against neighbor in a struggle for survival.

In the past, farmers accepted drift as a cost of doing business. If chemicals inadvertently spread from one plot of land to another, farmers would typically settle any losses amicably through a handshake deal. But with Monsanto’s new products suddenly being sprayed at a massive scale, drift is now sparking conflicts—and violence. The controversy over dicamba reveals the fault lines of modern agriculture, which is increasingly built atop a precarious framework of chemistry. It also reveals who holds the power. The new seed-and-chemical combination serves as a kind of protection racket, initiated by Monsanto: Pay to use dicamba-resistant soybeans, or you may lose your crop and your livelihood.

The EPA is so confident that traces of pesticides in food are safe that the agency has granted multiple chemical company requests for increases in the allowed tolerances, effectively providing a legal basis for higher levels of pesticide residues to be allowed in American food.

But recent scientific studies have prompted many scientists to warn that years of promises of safety may be wrong. While no one is expected to drop dead from eating a bowl of cereal containing pesticide residues, repeated low level exposures to trace amounts of pesticides in the diet could be contributing to a range of health problems, particularly for children, scientists say.

“There are probably many other health effects; we just haven’t studied them”

A team of Harvard scientists published a commentary in October stating that more research about potential links between disease and consumption of pesticide residues is "urgently needed" as more than 90 percent of the U.S. population has pesticide residues in their urine and blood. The primary route of exposure to these pesticides is through the food people eat, the Harvard research team said.

Several additional Harvard-affiliated scientists published a study earlier this year of women who were trying to get pregnant. The findings suggested that dietary pesticide exposure within a "typical" range was associated both with problems women had getting pregnant and delivering live babies, the scientists said.

Trump Picks Former Monsanto Executive to Head U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

In what environmental groups are calling a cruel joke, the Trump administration’s has chosen a former agro-chemical executive to head of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife service.

Aurelia Skipwith worked as a corporate affairs executive at Monsanto for six years before spending the last year and a half in the U.S. Department of the Interior, where she oversaw the dismantling of dozens of wildlife protections, including:

The discontinuation of studies assessing the impact of pesticides on endangered speciesThe reversal of a decision prohibiting bee-killing neonicotinoid pesticides and genetically modified crops on national wildlife refuges.If confirmed by the U.S. Senate, Skipwith’s duties will include enforcing federal wildlife laws, protecting endangered species, managing migratory birds, and conserving and restoring wildlife habitat.

It should also be noted — since one of her main duties would be to protect fish — that agro-chemical companies like Monsanto are largely to blame for the “dead zones” of the Gulf and Atlantic coasts, where runoff from synthetic fertilizers and pesticides has contributed to making entire coastlines uninhabitable by fish.

The pick continues a Trump Administration trend of filling top environmental positions with members of the industries the agencies are intended to regulate, notes the Organic Consumers Association.

"Whoever conceived it, the creation of a specific organization for the express purpose of infiltrating the scientific literature at the very highest level represents an expensive and sophisticated marketing and PR strategy. "

The secret ingredients in our food may be a lead driver of our obesity, infertility, cancer, digestive problems, autism, brain fog, skin conditions, gluten sensitivity, allergies, fatigue, anxiety, and many other conditions. Meet more than a dozen people whose turned around serious health conditions after adopting a diet that avoids genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and food sprayed with toxic herbicides like Roundup. Learn from leading physicians who say that these are not coincidences. They see illness and recovery like this every day in their practice. And listen to the scientists who explain why.

“Someday we shall look back on this dark era of agriculture and shake our heads. How could we have ever believed that it was a good idea to grow our food with poisons?” ~ Dr. Jane Goodall

Moms Across America…

Monsanto's Roundup Found in Baby Food

Moms Across America announces that the baby food samples tested were positive for residues of glyphosate when the baby foods contained grains such as rice, wheat, or oats. Baby foods that contained only fruits and vegetables did not. Eight different conventional baby foods from two top brands, Gerber and Comfort for Baby, were tested by Health Research Institute labs in Iowa, with the “gold standard” HPLC MS/MS methodology. The levels found in the foods with grain as part of the ingredients averaged 14.3 parts per billion, which is 143 times higher the amount that is allowed in EU drinking water. At home testing on Gerber Oatmeal and Apple Toddler Cereal revealed that glyphosate levels between 50-200 ppb. Oats are commonly sprayed with glyphosate as a drying agent so most conventional oat products are expected to have similar levels of glyphosate.

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“Children, when we talk about the unborn, the newborn and grown children up to puberty, they do not have the detoxification enzymes in their livers that we have as adults. Particularly for young children, that means they have no way of detoxifying even the smallest amount of a pesticide or a chemical.”

Scientists around the world are editing the genes of livestock to create meatier pigs, cashmere goats with longer hair and cold-weather cows that can thrive in the tropics. The goals are to improve agricultural productivity, produce hardier beasts and reduce practices that are costly or considered inhumane. But amid some successes, disturbing outcomes are surfacing.

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The belief has spread that scientists know how gene editing works “all the time, under all conditions,” says Odd-Gunnar Wikmark, a researcher at the Norway-based foundation GenOk, which studies the consequences of genetic engineering. “We of course do not.”

These documents, obtained via Discovery (pre-trial civil procedure allowing the parties to obtain evidence from each other) allow people to see what is happening “behind the curtain” of secrecy that normally shrouds ongoing litigation. You will find links to internal Monsanto emails, text messages, company reports, studies and other memoranda.

A similar issue appeared in academic research. An academic involved in writing research funded by Monsanto, John Acquavella, a former Monsanto employee, appeared to express discomfort with the process, writing in a 2015 email to a Monsanto executive, “I can’t be part of deceptive authorship on a presentation or publication.” He also said of the way the company was trying to present the authorship: “We call that ghost writing and it is unethical.”

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“If somebody came to me and said they wanted to test Roundup I know how I would react — with serious concern,” one Monsanto scientist wrote in an internal email in 2001.

I recently interviewed Dr. Antoniou about his newly published studies.

Please summarize the findings of your study showing that the GMO corn NK 603 was not substantially equivalent to a non-GMO corn.

“...Does the claim of substantial equivalence stand up to this fine compositional analysis? No, it doesn’t. Our analysis found over 150 different proteins whose levels were different between the GMO NK603 and its non-GMO counterpart. More than 50 small molecule metabolites were also significantly different in their amounts.”

What do these differences indicate?

“...The bottom line of the paper is that once you do a compositional analysis properly, the GMO corn doesn’t stand up to claims of substantial equivalence. This questions the validity of a key step in the GM corn’s approval process.

A more detailed safety evaluation should have been conducted for this corn.”

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What are your thoughts about genetic engineering of foods?

“I’ve maintained all along that when you take a look at the GMO transformation process—whether inserting genes or using newer methods, such as gene editing—and place these methods in the context of new genetics, which tells us that no gene or its protein product works in isolation, then you can expect problems from these genetic engineering procedures. Genes and their protein products work together in a highly complex, interactive, and integrated network. From the holistic perspective of gene organization, control, and function, the GMO transformation process is technically and conceptually flawed. It’s inevitable that there will be problems; it’s just a matter of degree. This is what basic science tells us.

And when GMOs are added to their associated pesticide residues, as a package, they become a potentially very harmful product.

Technologies like genetic engineering in agriculture must be re-evaluated for safety as the science shifts. If, as we do this, we find that it is not a predictable and safe technology, we need to have the courage to say “no” and look at different ways to achieve our goals because what we are doing is clearly disruptive.”

Pharma is so big, it will corrupt everything that is good. Please, not Cochrane!

About Cochrane: ...Our global independent network gathers and summarizes the best evidence from research to help you make informed choices about treatment and we have been doing this for 25 years.

We do not accept commercial or conflicted funding. This is vital for us to generate authoritative and reliable information, working freely, unconstrained by commercial and financial interests. https://www.cochrane.org/about-us

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Seneff: “I don't know what to say about this. It is astonishing what is happening these days in the scientific world. Pharma is just way way too powerful, is the only conclusion you can draw.”

My dismissal is scientific judicial murder. By Peter C. Gøtzsche

It is a full-blown scandal that Rigshospitalet will dismiss me. It is a clear attack on both independent research and freedom of expression.

...Instead of silencing an important voice, Rigshospitalet and the Ministry should protect me. Firing me sends the unfortunate signal that if your research results are inconvenient and cause public turmoil, or threaten the pharmaceutical industry’s earnings, which we are very concerned about in Denmark, we will fire you. Strikingly many of the documents my lawyer has obtained from the Ministry through the Freedom of Information Act are articles where healthcare stakeholders – e.g. psychiatrists, doctors with conflicts of interest, the Health and Medicines Agencies, and editors of journals financed by the pharmaceutical industry – try to depict me as untrustworthy to promote their own interests.

It led to massive resentment, with several articles in, for example, Science, Nature, BMJ and Lancet, that I was expelled from the Cochrane Collaboration after a process where new accusations were invented on the spot after Cochrane’s own lawyer’s investigation had exonerated me from all charges. I believe I have unequivocal evidence that the process is invalid. The next day, four members resigned from the board in protest.

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My situation is the result of a power struggle between two wings. One wing is led by Wilson who advocates that everyone in Cochrane should speak with the same voice; he opposes open scientific debates about the quality and reliability of concrete Cochrane reviews; he puts more emphasis on “brand”, “our product” and “business” than getting the science right; and he allows economic conflicts of interest in relation to the pharmaceutical industry

The other wing wants to bring Cochrane back to its original values: Free scientific debates; no financial conflicts of interest for the researchers making Cochrane reviews in relation to the companies whose products they evaluate; and openness, transparency, democracy and cooperation.

The scientists found “treatment-related changes in a brain dimension measure for chlorpyrifos at all dose levels tested.” These findings went unreported in Dow’s original analysis. In other words, Dow’s own data showed that chlorpyrifos hurt rats, but company didn’t communicate that fact to regulators. According to the study authors:

We further found issues which inappropriately decrease the ability of the studies to reveal true effects, including a dosage regimen that resulted in too low exposure of the nursing pups for chlorpyrifos and possibly for chlorpyrifos-methyl, and a failure to detect any neurobehavioral effects of lead nitrate used as positive control in the chlorpyrifos study.

Our observations thus suggest that conclusions in test reports submitted by the producer may be misleading. This discrepancy affects the ability of regulatory authorities to perform a valid and safe evaluation of these pesticides. The difference between raw data and conclusions in the test reports indicates a potential existence of bias that would require regulatory attention and possible resolution.

Chlorpyrifos applied to 50 different crops

Chlorpyrifos, an organophosphate pesticide (OP) widely used in agriculture, is approved for use in 100 countries. The insecticide is used on an upwards of 50 crops including almonds, cotton, citrus fruits, grapes, corn, broccoli, sugar beets, peaches and nectarines.

Despite being allowed on all these foods, chlorpyrifos was banned for indoor home use in 2001.

Contact Organics is bringing something new to the safe weed control space. By combining cutting-edge technology and scientific research with natural ingredients, we present a breakthrough in environmentally-friendly weed control. Innovative ideas and a response to the need for an ecological, safe weed killer are the foundations of our products. Contact Organics rejects toxic ingredients for natural ones – and the result is a range of revolutionary safe herbicides.

Match Made In Hell: Bayer-Monsanto Partnership Signals Death Knell for Humanity

The criminal-like behavior has continued right up until modern times. Mike Papantonio, a US attorney and television presenter discussed one of the more heinous acts committed by this chemical company on Thomas Hartmann’s program, The Big Picture: “They produced a clotting agent for hemophiliacs, in the 1980s, called Factor VIII. This blood-clotting agent was tainted with HIV, and then, after the government told them they couldn’t sell it here, they shipped it all over the world, infecting people all over the world. That’s just part of the Bayer story.”

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Before flushing your Bayer products down the toilet, you may want to put aside an aspirin or two because the story gets worse.

Secret tactics used by global chemical giant Monsanto (now Bayer-Monsanto), to protect its billion-dollar business and its star product, the carcinogenic weedkiller, Roundup. "Monsanto has engaged in a systematic and deliberate campaign to attack any science that says their product is not safe and to attack any scientist that has the courage to say something," says Brent Wisner, Lawyer. "The broad advertising claims that Monsanto was advancing in those days (was) that somehow their Roundup product was entirely safe, biodegradable, safe for pets and children, and less dangerous than table salt," says a former NY Attorney General. Watch the program and let us know what you think. And be sure to tell your friends and family to watch it too. Everyone needs to know about the evil ways of Bayer-Monsanto.

China Set to Shock Markets with Low Glyphosate Residue Limits in Food Imports

China’s action would likely decrease the global use of glyphosate as a desiccant. The practice, known as desiccating, pre-harvest spraying or crop topping, is favored by many ‘conventional’ farmers as a way to hasten the even ripening of grains, such as wheat, oats and barley, as well as legumes and other crops such as sunflowers and potatoes, even though it is not a recommended use of the increasingly controversial weedkiller. Desiccation leads to higher levels of the herbicide in harvested crops and final food products.

GMO beet sugar is the #1 sugar consumed in the USA, primarily used in restaurants and the food service industry. GMO beet sugar is significantly cheaper than cane sugar, and it is raised with – you guessed it – Monsanto’s herbicide Glyphosate.

One of the most common misconceptions is that many people think that “Natural” means Organic. Sadly, the word “Natural” is not a regulated term. Consumers think “Natural” means it’s a healthier choice than something that’s not “Natural” but to be completely honest with you, the proof is on the ingredient label. That’s where you’re going to see if the product is healthy for you or not. Can you read the ingredients? Or are there a whole bunch of terms on there that you don’t understand? Is it made from whole, organic foods? Or is it made from chemicals? That’s where you need to look to get your answer. Skip over the “Natural” label and look at what the company is using to make the food or food-like product they’re selling to you.

Another area where people seem to get confused is differentiating between the terms “Certified Organic” and “Non-GMO”. It’s important to note that all organic products are Non-GMO, however, the opposite is not true: Non-GMO products are not organic. That’s not to say that Non-GMO products are bad, it’s a matter of you choosing what you’d rather eat and feed your family because a product that’s not Certified Organic but is Non-GMO is grown with pesticides and chemical fertilizers. If you want food free from toxic chemicals and GMO’s, organic is your choice.

Leading up to their monstrous union on June 7, 2018, analysts predicted huge profits from the further monopolization of the pesticide industry on the backs of rising prices for farmers and consumers.

Instead, the stock went up briefly to $31.67 per share on June 16, and ever since has been trading at a steady decline and currently rests just shy of halfit’s price 6 months ago at $17.81.

Now Bayer is rapidly cutting jobs and selling off smaller brands in an effort to stay viable amidst the stunning losses.

So what happened to cause such a drastic decline, and why is this such amazing news for those who oppose the egregious practices of big biotech?

KARMA ROUNDUP

Just after selling out, the verdict for a landmark case against Monsanto was set to be delivered. The plaintiff, Dewayne Johnson, alleged Monsanto suppressed evidence it’s weedkiller RoundUp caused his terminal non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma he used regularly when he worked as a school grounds keeper.

Johnson’s case was heard ahead of other similar cases because of his rapidly declining health. After a long and uncertain battle the final judgement finally came: the jury found Monsanto acted with:

“malice… because they knew what they were doing was wrong and doing it with reckless disregard for human life.”

This is a great 6-minute educational video and we had to share. Bees are still dying in masses. Many don’t understand the significance of this – until you realize that one-third of all food humans consume is pollinated by them and would disappear with them if they were wiped out. Millions could starve. The foes bees face are truly horrifying and there is strong evidence linking the die-off to our agricultural practices – namely the use of neonicotinoid insecticides. We need to help our small buzzing friends or we will face extremely unpleasant consequences.

Seneff: “This interview with Dr. Jack Wolfson, cardiologist, has just been posted on the Web. I thought the interview went very well and we covered a lot of territory - glyphosate, vaccines, statin drugs, autism, heart disease, food allergies, etc.”

The secret ingredients in our food may be a lead driver of our obesity, infertility, cancer, digestive problems, autism, brain fog, skin conditions, gluten sensitivity, allergies, fatigue, anxiety, and many other conditions. Meet more than a dozen people whose turned around serious health conditions after adopting a diet that avoids genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and food sprayed with toxic herbicides like Roundup. Learn from leading physicians who say that these are not coincidences. They see illness and recovery like this every day in their practice. And listen to the scientists who explain why.

“...Using the VAERS database, we have shown that severe adverse reactions to the MMR vaccine have increased significantly over the past decade in step with the increased use of glyphosate. Glyphosate in MMR may originate from growth of the live virus on culture materials derived from glyphosate-exposed animals and/or from gelatin used as an excipient stabilizer. We have confirmed the presence of glyphosate contamination in MMR and in many other vaccines where the live virus is cultured in eggs, bovine protein or gelatin, or where animal products are used as an excipient component.” Glyphosate pathways to modern diseases VI: Prions, amyloidoses and autoimmuneneurological diseases - Anthony Samsel and Stephanie Seneff. http://www.amsi.ge/jbpc/11717/25SA16A.pd...kNFv5nQ9JJM2bqk

New study….Parkinson’s…Glyphosate...

Estimated Residential Exposure to Agricultural Chemicals and Premature Mortality by Parkinson’s Disease in Washington State

Abstract: The aim of this study was to examine the relationship between estimated residential exposure to agricultural chemical application and premature mortality from Parkinson’s disease (PD) in Washington State. Washington State mortality records for 2011–2015 were geocoded using residential addresses, and classified as having exposure to agricultural land-use within 1000 meters. Generalized linear models were used to explore the association between land-use associated with agricultural chemical application and premature mortality from PD. Individuals exposed to land-use associated with glyphosate had 33% higher odds of premature mortality than those that were not exposed (Odds Ratio (OR) = 1.33, 95% Confidence Intervals (CI) = 1.06–1.67). Exposure to cropland associated with all pesticide application (OR = 1.19, 95% CI = 0.98–1.44) or Paraquat application (OR = 1.22, 95% CI = 0.99–1.51) was not significantly associated with premature mortality from PD, but the effect size was in the hypothesized direction. No significant associations were observed between exposure to Atrazine (OR = 1.21, 95% CI = 0.84–1.74) or Diazinon (OR = 1.07, 95% CI = 0.85–1.34), and premature mortality from PD. The relationship between pesticide exposure and premature mortality aligns with previous biological, toxicological, and epidemiological findings. Glyphosate, the world’s most heavily applied herbicide, and an active ingredient in Roundup® and Paraquat, a toxic herbicide, has shown to be associated with the odds of premature mortality from PD.

The nation’s first USDA-certified organic campus integrates farm work and food production into every aspect of student life.

Olney has always had a strong farm identity, but the school’s goal is not necessarily to graduate future farmers. Graduates go on to four-year colleges, and few if any work in agriculture later. “Our goal is well-rounded citizens who are smart consumers with social awareness. The farm is a great place to absorb lessons in the complexity of sustainable systems,” Guindon points out.

New sneaky field trial application by Dupont/Pioneer HiBred advertised during festive season.

Pioneer Hi-Bred RSA (Pty) has today advertised in the Citizen newspaper (21st December 2018) an application for the field trial release of a genetically modified (GM) maize variety, DP-056113-9.

This variety is part of their ’Seed Production Technology for Africa’, where female hybrid parent varieties are made infertile by not producing pollen, thus eliminating the need to manually remove the tassels from female parent lines during hybrid seed production in the private seed sector. The variety includes three transgenes including one that activates the RNAi pathway. Activation of the RNAi pathway in GM crops comes with novel and additional biosafety concerns, and to date, biosafety aspects of RNAi crops are under-characterised for this controversial technology.

Of concern to the ACB, is that Information on this GM variety is completely lacking. It appears that this trial in South Africa may be the first time it has been released into the environment, anywhere in the world. Currently, we have no access to risk assessment data to be able to provide independent analysis of the potential biosafety risks of introducing this untested variety into the environment/ This raises serious concerns over potential adverse effects.

Once again, the GM industry is testing its products on the citizens and environment of South Africa, who are once again being targeted as recipients of an unproven technology that promotes the private seed industry at the cost of our local, small-holder farmers.

We will make application for the dossier and prepare an objection and share this with you. We will also be requesting an extension to file our objection since it is really unbelievable that they would advertise this application during the festive season when most South Africans are on holidays after a long and hard year…”

The study, published in the journal Interdisciplinary Toxicology in 2013, was completely ignored by the media except for Mother Earth News and The Healthy Home Economist.

Now that glyphosate is getting the attention it deserves, being named as the culprit in a $280 million cancer lawsuit and labeled as a carcinogen by the World Health Organization and the state of California, it may be time to look at the chemical’s role in a related disease:

The symptoms of so-called “gluten intolerance” and celiac disease are shockingly similar to the symptoms in lab animals exposed to glyphosate, argue the study’s authors Anthony Samsel, an independent scientist who’s served as a consultant to the EPA on arsenic pollution and to the U.S. Coast Guard on chemical hazard response, and Stephanie Seneff, a senior research scientist at MIT.

They point to a recent study on how glyphosate effects the digestive systems of fish. It decreased digestive enzymes and bacteria, disrupted mucosal folds, destroyed microvilli structure in the intestinal wall, and increased secretion of mucin.

“These features are highly reminiscent of celiac disease,” Samsel and Seneff write.

IOWA CITY, Iowa — A Missouri farmer and businessman ripped off consumers nationwide by falsely marketing more than $140 million worth of corn, soybeans and wheat as certified organic grains, federal prosecutors said Wednesday.

The long-running fraud scheme outlined in court documents by prosecutors in Iowa is one of the largest uncovered in the fast-growing organic farming industry. The victims included food companies and their customers who paid higher prices because they thought they were buying grains that had been grown using environmentally sustainable practices.

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To be certified organic, grains must be grown without the use of synthetic fertilizers, sewage sludge and other substances that can be harmful to the environment. Organic farmers must go through a roughly three-year process to achieve certified status, which includes reviews by a USDA-accredited agent and on-site inspections.

Constant told customers his grain was certified organic because some of it had been grown on his farms in Missouri and Nebraska. But the charging document alleges that at least 90 percent of the grain being sold was non-organic grain that he either grew himself elsewhere or bought from other farmers.

Constant was aware that farmers he purchased from used unapproved substances, including pesticides and nitrogen, to grow their crops, the document says.

Constant’s punishment could be a deterrent for others considering fraudulent organics. He’s agreed to forfeit more than $128 million, and 70 pieces of farm equipment, including tractors, combines and big trucks. Constant’s also looking at as many as 20 years in prison.

A review of the scientific literature links glyphosate, one of the most popular weed killers in the U.S. and the active ingredient in Roundup, to a wide range of diseases through a mechanism that modifies DNA functioning, adding a new even more troubling dimension to the herbicide’s cancer classification by the International Agency for Research on Cancer. According to the most recent review, Glyphosate pathways to modern disease V: Amino acid analogue of glycine in diverse proteins, conducted by independent scientists Anthony Samsel, Ph.D. and Stephanie Seneff, Ph.D., a scientist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), glyphosate acts as a glycine analogue that incorporates into peptides during protein synthesis. In this process, it alters a number of proteins that depend on conserved glycine for proper function. According to the authors, glyphosate substitution for glycine correlates with several diseases, including diabetes, obesity, asthma, Alzheimer’s disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), and Parkinson’s disease, among others.

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Stephen Frantz, Ph.D., a pathobiologist research scientist explains it like this: “When a cell is trying to form proteins, it may grab glyphosate instead of glycine to form a damaged, mis-folded protein. After that it’s medical chaos. Where glyphosate replaces glycine, the cell can no longer conduct business as usual causing unpredicted consequences with many diseases and disorders as a result.”

11. CONCLUSION: In this paper, we have shown that widespread misincorporation of glyphosate for glycine during protein synthesis could explain the aetiology of multiple autoimmune diseases that are currently increasing in incidence in the USA. Misincorporation is plausible by analogy with multiple known toxins produced by organisms in defence against pathogens, including Aze, BMAA, L-canavanine and glufosinate, which work in a similar manner. We have shown that proteins from foods such as milk, wheat and sugar beet, as well as peptides derived from microbes resident in the gut or nasal tract or introduced iatrogenically through vaccination, are all potential causes of autoimmune disease induced through molecular mimicry. It is highly significant that two microbes linked to MS through molecular mimicry are among the very few microbes that can fully metabolize glyphosate. Using the VAERS database, we have shown that severe adverse reactions to the MMR vaccine have increased significantly over the past decade in step with the increased use of glyphosate. Glyphosate in MMR may originate from growth of the live virus on culture materials derived from glyphosate-exposed animals and/or from gelatin used as an excipient stabilizer. We have confirmed the presence of glyphosate contamination in MMR and in many other vaccines where the live virus iscultured in eggs, bovine protein or gelatin, or where animal products are used as an excipient component. Notably, some vaccines prepared without live culture on gelatin were free of glyphosate contamination. Substitution of glyphosate for glycine during protein synthesis could yield a peptide that resists proteolysis, making it more likely to induce an immune response. Furthermore, enzymes involved in proteolysis are likely to be disrupted due to their confirmed contamination with glyphosate. A non-exhaustive list of possible diseases that can be attributed to this mechanism include autism,multiple sclerosis, type 1 diabetes, coeliac disease, inflammatory bowel disease and neuromyelitis optica.

Small bits of plastic packaging from waste food make their way into animal feed as part of the UK’s permitted recycling process

Their comments came after British farmer Andrew Rock contacted the Guardian, having noticed plastic shreds in his animal feed. Rock was told by the suppliers that this was a legal part of the recycling process that turns waste food, still packaged, into animal feed.

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“I definitely hope there is more research,” said Dr Stephanie Wright, a Research Associate at King’s College London studying the impact on human health of microplastics. She pointed out that there is a risk of chemicals leaching from plastics, even very small parts. “The chemicals at microscopic level in the network that make up plastic, [that are used] to give flexibility, or flame retardent properties, they can come off very easily, they are susceptible to leaching. This is why BPA [a chemical found in food packaging] was banned from baby bottles, because it leached into the milk from the plastic.

"In 1990s, I introduced GM cotton in India. Twenty years later, I regret...I am responsible for suicide of thousands of cotton farmers," Subramanian said at an panel discussion at a book launch function.

The best way to maintain adequate supplies of folate and cobalamin is to eat a strictly organic diet that is rich in fresh vegetables, seafood, eggs, and grass-fed beef and liver. Particularly good sources of folate include beef liver, spinach, black-eyed peas, asparagus, Brussels sprouts, avocado, broccoli, mustard greens, green peas and kidney beans.

Finally, UN General Assembly adopts Peasant Rights declaration! Now focus is on its implementation

”This declaration is an important tool which should guarantee and realize the rights of the peasants and other working people in rural areas. We urge all states to implement the declaration in a conscientiousness and transparent manner, guaranteeing peasants and rural communities the access to and control over land, peasant’s seeds, water and other natural resources. As peasants we need the protection and the respect for our values and our role in society to achieve food sovereignty,” said Elizabeth Mpofu, a peasant farmer from Zimbabwe and La Via Campesina General Coordinator.

This articles considers the risks associated with reusing produced water from oil and gas production.

Conclusion

In conclusion, while a number of impacts of produced water reuse have been identified, organic compounds used in oil and gas development are not sufficiently disclosed, identified, and quantitated in produced water. As such, there are significant data gaps in information on the physicochemical andtoxicological properties of compounds used downhole and likely present in produced water. Given this, it is clear that conditions do not currently exist to properly evaluate the risks posed by the reuse of produced water or discharge of partially treated produced water to surface water. Policies and research agendas should be promulgated that set a course to systematically assess the risks of produced water reuse to ensure that appropriate monitoring and treatment options exist priorto a further expansion of this practice.

60 Minutes did a segment on these issues years ago. NOTHING HAS CHANGED!

These industrial farmers are growing food that poisons us and our government sends them a big fat check!

The Farm Bill Ignores the Real Troubles of U.S. Agriculture

From 1996 to 2016, the top 10 percent of the companies that received the Farm Bill’s commodity subsidies — the biggest operations in sales — accounted for 77 percent of the total. This year’s bill continues to offer enormous subsidies to large corporations rather than prioritizing the needs of struggling small farmers. Farms in the top 10 percent for crop sales received 68 percent of all crop insurance subsidies in 2014, according to the American Enterprise Institute.

Yet this year's Farm Bill exempts marketing loan gains and loan deficiency payments (generally used by farmers when, because market prices are low, they would rather store than sell their crop) from payment limitations. It also permits farmers’ children and spouses — without ever having set foot on the farm — to count as “actively engaged” in farming, thus qualifying them for $125,000 worth of subsidy payments. It also allows nephews, nieces and cousins to be “daisy chained” in to receive these payments as well.

. . . whatever goes into the sewer system and emerges as solids from municipal wastewater treatment plants. Sludge can be (its exact composition varies and is not knowable) any of the 80,000 synthetic chemicals used by industry; new chemicals created from combining two or more of those 80,000; bacteria and viruses; hospital waste; runoff from roads; pharmaceuticals and over-the-counter drugs; detergents and chemicals that are put down drains in residences; and, of course, urine and feces flushed down toilets.

This toxic stew is sold to farmers who use it to fertilize food crops—a fact most consumers don’t know, because food producers and retailers aren’t required to tell you.

TAKE ACTION: Ask your Member of Congress to cosponsor the Sewage Sludge in Food Production Consumer Notification Act

In their analysis, EWG compared 2017 federal testing data collected at utilities in seven states, including Texas, with atrazine levels reported to state authorities over the same period. For 70 percent of utilities analyzed, the EWG found that tests were conducted outside periods of the atrazine spikes or that reported levels were below what EPA tests found.

Olga Naidenko, an EWG senior science advisor, said many water utilities stay in compliance withdrinking water regulations by avoiding testing during seasonal spikes of atrazine.

“The utility, by playing the dates game, may not pick up the spike,” said Naidenko, one of the report’s authors. “By testing before or after the spike, they are effectively missing the spike or reporting very low levels.”

We thoroughly reject the USDA’s fake GMO labeling policy as a blatant attempt to help food companies hide the GMO content from concerned consumers.

We demand that the government craft a new policy that provides real transparency.

We also demand that food companies voluntarily provide that transparency, and most certainly not use the fake labeling policy to hide GMO content or make it difficult to verify.

The USDA policy is a travesty.

Most GMO products would not be labeled

Oil made from 100% GMO soy or corn, for example, sugar from 100% GMO sugar beets, and corn syrup from 100% GMO corn would all go unlabeled! Unlike the European labeling standard, the USDA requires that GMO tests can detect GMOs in the final product. This excludes the vast majority of refined derivatives of GMO foods. Consumers have consistently rejected such a loophole.

The rule excludes GMOs made from new methods such as gene editing. This is completely unacceptable.

At this time of year many organizations are asking you to donate. Here is my list of organizations, that I’ve followed for over five years that I feel are deserving of our donations. These organizations taught me about how our food was changed and have been instrumental in driving change by food manufacturers and government.

The secret ingredients in our food may be a lead driver of our obesity, infertility, cancer, digestive problems, autism, brain fog, skin conditions, gluten sensitivity, allergies, fatigue, anxiety, and many other conditions. Meet more than a dozen people whose turned around serious health conditions after adopting a diet that avoids genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and food sprayed with toxic herbicides like Roundup. Learn from leading physicians who say that these are not coincidences. They see illness and recovery like this every day in their practice. And listen to the scientists who explain why.

USDA’s new disclosure rule for genetically engineered food will leave many consumers in the dark

Information will be hard to access, rule omits many genetically engineered foods

Many GMO foods were exempted from the disclosure rules, including highly refined oils and many soft drinks, on the grounds that they don’t contain detectable DNA. However companies can keep track of whether a product is genetically engineered or not through basic recordkeeping. And consumers want to know if the food came from a genetically engineered source, regardless of the detectability DNA.

The vast majority of corn, soy, canola, and sugar beets grown in the U.S. are now genetically engineered, and they are often used as ingredients in processed foods. Consumer Reports had urged the USDA to require disclosure using easily recognized terms, such as “GE,” “genetic engineering,” or “GMO” and include highly processed ingredients.

Erin Brockovich, the environmental consumer advocate, took to the Guardian to proclaim, “The weedkiller in our food is killing us.”1 She has vowed to bring down this global industry behemoth to help save both our collective health and the planet’s.

Ms. Brockovich is speaking about glyphosate, the herbicidal ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup, one of the most widely used agricultural chemicals in the U.S. In no uncertain terms, reflecting on a recent jury award of $289 million (later reduced to $78 million) to Dewayne Johnson, a school groundskeeper dying of cancer, Brockovich states:

“Growing research suggests that glyphosate causes a form of cancer called non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, with which Johnson was diagnosed in 2014.

At least three studies, in the US, Canada, and Sweden, have linked glyphosate exposure to the disease, and, in 2015, the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer found glyphosate to be a “probable” cause of cancer in humans. California’s state environmental protection agency has also declared it a probable carcinogen.” 1

New Report exposes how a controversial genetic forcing technology is targeting the farm

“Applying gene drives to food and agriculture turns biotech industry strategies on their head,” explains Jim Thomas, Co-Executive Director of ETC Group. “Previously GMO companies engineered the food crops. Now that consumers won’t buy GMO food, companies are coming to engineer the rest of the agricultural system instead – the weeds, the pests and the pollinators.”

“If spreading gene drives were to be released, they could pose an existential threat to organic, non-GMO and agroecological agriculture,” explains Peggy Miars, International Chair of IFOAM – Organics International, the umbrella organization for organic agriculture worldwide with close to 800 affiliates in 117 countries. “Any government who cares about protecting organic agriculture and the organic food market should move quickly to contain this threat.”]

French President Emmanuel Macron made a campaign promise: to ban glyphosate, the weedkiller sold under the Roundup brand. But last week, his party’s lawmakers rejected an amendment to do that, raising accusations they are beholden to the farm lobby.

“In the decade that I spent working I was never given useful or decent protection of any kind, just gloves that I would usually buy for myself," Ceran said. "To save money and time we would mix as much as seven products in the same round of application, when the norm established that you should never mix more than three products at once. We would use all kinds of products mixed, some completely illegal because of its dangers, but effective, and at the end that’s all that matters to them, if the bug or the bad weeds go away or not.”

“I felt sick every time I did it, I could tell that it wasn’t good for me, even my boss and the doctors he took me to see said that my sickness wasn't related to the work I did. It was killing me and I still did it because the pay was decent enough, but it's taking my life away.”

Ceran believes that the entire system is rigged in favour of agrochemical companies. He thinks the doctors he visited have lied to him about the cause of his disease. Deep inside, he feels it's the intensive farming that gave him all the diseases.

India’s apex food regulator, the Food Safety and Standards of India (FSSAI) has finally woken up to ensure Indians do not consume the highly toxic lentils imported from countries like Canada and Australia. The lentils such as masoor dal and moong dal are said to be induced with hazardous herbicide Glyphosate which is being used indiscriminately by farmers in some countries to clear weeds in the crop.

While India is yet to have its own standards for herbicide Glyphosate residues in lentils despite importing over 5 million tonnes of pulses, it has now, for the time being, decided to follow the international parameters to ensure that the pulses being sold and imported in the country are safe for consumption.

The Delaware River Basin Commission, which includes the governors of NY, NJ, PA and DE, is responsible for protecting the Delaware River Basin — a source of drinking water for millions of people — from dangerous actions like fracking. And they'll be voting soon about fracking regulations in the basin.

Proposed regulations for the Delaware River Basin would ban fracking, but leave the door open for fracking waste to enter the watershed and allow drilling companies to take water for their own uses. That's unacceptable.

Tell your governor: We need a COMPLETE fracking ban, not an unacceptable half-measure.

Unprecedented Lawsuit Could End Water Fluoridation in US Based on Neurotoxicity Studies

The Fluoride Action Network (FAN), along with a coalition of environmental and public health groups has filed a complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in response to their denial of our petition under Section 21 of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) seeking a ban on water fluoridation.

We believe this lawsuit is an unprecedented opportunity to end the practice once and for all in the U.S., and potentially throughout the world, based on the well-documented neurotoxicity of fluoride. You may read the official complaint here. According to FAN’s attorney and adviser, Michael Connett:

“This case will present the first time a court will consider the neurotoxicity of fluoride and the question of whether fluoridation presents an unreasonable risk under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).

And, in contrast to most other legal challenges of Agency actions, TSCA gives us the right to get the federal court to consider our evidence ‘de novo’ — meaning federal courts are to conduct their own independent review of the evidence without deference to the EPA’s judgment.”

Industry, legal and environmental observers following the EPA’s implementation of the new TSCA law have pointed out that a lawsuit1challenging the EPA’s denial of our petition would provide a test case for the agency’s interpretation that petitioners must provide a comprehensive analysis of all uses of a chemical in order to seek a restriction on a particular use.

Legal experts have suggested the EPA’s interpretation essentially makes the requirements for gaining Agency action using section 21 petitions impossible to meet, making the outcome significant for all U.S. residents and public health or environmental watchdog groups.

A New York Times analysis, based on research from Harvard Law School, Columbia Law School and other sources, counts nearly 80 environmental rules on the way out under Mr. Trump. Our list represents two types of policy changes: rules that were officially reversed and rollbacks still in progress. Nearly a dozen more rules – summarized at the bottom of this page – were rolled back and then later reinstated, often following legal challenges.

The secret ingredients in our food may be a lead driver of our obesity, infertility, cancer, digestive problems, autism, brain fog, skin conditions, gluten sensitivity, allergies, fatigue, anxiety, and many other conditions. Meet more than a dozen people whose turned around serious health conditions after adopting a diet that avoids genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and food sprayed with toxic herbicides like Roundup. Learn from leading physicians who say that these are not coincidences. They see illness and recovery like this every day in their practice. And listen to the scientists who explain why.